Philip. 4:21?22
Greet all the saints in Christ Jesus.  All the saints send you greetings, especially those who belong to Caesar’s household.

When our Lord was born, Augustus was the Caesar of Rome.  He was followed by Tiberias (about whom it was said that he liked not one single human being and that not one single human being liked him).  Tiberius was followed by the depraved Gaius Caesar, better known as Caligula - Little Boots.  He ruled for 4 years and was a monster of cruelty and vice.  He was finally assassinated in the year A.D. 41.  The Praetorian Guard, fearful of a return to a republic, forcibly made Claudius (officially Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus) the emperor.  And for the next 13 years this strange man of handicapped body and slow speech was the monarch of the Roman world.  Claudius was followed, in turn, by Nero who ruled for 14 years until his suicide in A.D. 68.  All these decades were splotched with immorality, depravity and insanity such as the world has rarely witnessed.

But think of it!  In those years between A.D. 40 and 60, there were men and women who were followers of Jesus Christ who managed to thrive while working in the very palace of Caligula, Claudius and Nero!  Paul, who was under house arrest in Rome, testified of this reality in the letter he sent to the church at Philippi, “Those precious saints of God who reside in Caesar’s household send their greetings….”

Today we sometimes find professing saints who complain about the pressures of serving God in the free world.  How do they think they would have fared in ancient Rome where their witness for Christ could have made them fodder for the lions?  But on the other hand, some of the most courageous saints ever are serving God this very day.  Are you one of them?

Prayer:  O God, let me by Thy Spirit serve Thee well this day!   May there be no pressure or circumstance that would cause me to grieve Thee.  Let my thoughts, words and actions please Thee!  Amen.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.  (NIV)
I Corinthians 13:13 

Recently a 40 year-old Pakistani man decided that his 25 year-old stepdaughter had committed an immoral act.  She hadn’t, but he thought otherwise and killed her in cold blood.  Then he killed his three young daughters.

According to the Independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, hundreds of girls and women are murdered by male relatives each year in this conservative Islamic nation.  Speaking to the Associated Press in the back of a police truck, the man showed no contrition, only dismay that he didn’t murder the stepdaughter’s alleged lover as well.  He added, “I thought my younger daughters would do what the older girl did, so they should be eliminated.”

Authorities report the murdered woman actually did nothing, except flee her brutal husband who had forced her to work in a brick-making factory.  To get even with her for running away, the husband accused her falsely of adultery.  A human rights worker said, “Women are treated here as property.”  Here we find another major difference between Islam and Christianity.  Throughout history, Christianity has elevated the status of women - and rightly so!  Human rights in general are honored by followers of Christ and the dignity of the individual is upheld.  Jesus called upon His followers to “follow peace with all men, without which no man shall see God” (2 Tim. 2:2).  That is often not the case in religions where there is blind hatred, often fomented by so-called clerics who call for their congregations to kill and destroy.  The equipment of the follower of Christ is love.  Unfortunately, equipment for some other faiths is often a sword.

Prayer:  O God, help me to ever remember that the uniform of a Christ-follower is love. May I always react to those around me, drawing from the very love of Jesus Who dwells within me.   May I never give reason for reproach upon the lovely Name of my Lord Jesus.   Amen.

Acts 26:19

Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision.

I enjoy taking big band pop songs and re-writing the lyrics so I can sing them in church rallies.  This devotional is about one of those songs.

Recently I got to thinking about my joyous childhood which was centered around three institutions: my home, my school and my church.  Of the three, only the house still stands. I loved my church beyond words to tell you.  It was perhaps at that time the strongest evangelical church within a three-state area.  Recently I drove by it.  A chain-link, locked fence surrounds the structure.  The grounds are covered by weeds.  The site frankly broke my heart, and - thinking about it - I wrote these lyrics for a song prompted in my thinking by Joseph Rapozo’s song, “And there used to be a ballpark right here.”

“And there used to be a church house / in my childhood and my teens / where the people sang and worshiped with a joy I’ve seldom seen / and the place was filled with wonder / from the platform to the rear / yes, there used to be a church house right here.

“And there used to be a vision of those things God wanted done / now there’s no one still attending of those saints, not even one / and the sky has got so cloudy when it used to be so clear / and the glory left so quickly one year.

“Now the children try to find it / and they can’t believe their eyes / for the old folks don’t remember so no one really tries / but I’ll never stop recalling / those days still seem so near / that there used to be a church house B right here.”    It’s a sad song.   I pray it never happens to your home church.

Prayer:   O God, please help me do my part to keep the vision burning brightly in the church I attend.  In generations to come, may it continue to be a tribute to the power, mercy and glory of Your Name.   Amen.

More times than I can count, I have walked, taken a cab or a bus to the summit of the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem.     Don’t let the word “Mount” fool you; it’s a north-to-south ridge.     But the view from the top, looking west, across the famed Kidron Valley to the Eastern Wall of Jerusalem is never-to-be-forgotten.     Tourists disembarking from their busses almost immediately see my old Palestian friend Ali and Kojak - his camel.     Ali and I have been friends for decades and I always encourage my tour groups to ride Kojak.    Riding him is absolutely free.   Getting off?    Two bucks.    And you’re glad to pay it.    But…this blog is not about Ali or the camel.     

A hundred yards or so to the north, you encounter the entrance to the “Triumphant Entry” road, believed taken by Jesus on more than one occasion.     John, who was there, remembered:   “….a huge crowd that had arrived for the Feast (Passover) heard that Jesus was entering Jerusalem.   They broke off palm branches and went out to meet him.   And they cheered, ‘Hosanna!   Blessed is he who comes in God’s name!   Yes, the King of Israel!’    Jesus got a young donkey and rode it, just as the Scripture has it:   ‘No fear, Daughter Zion: See how your king comes, riding a donkey’s colt.’    The disciples didn’t notice the fulfillment of many Scriptures at the time, but after Jesus was glorified, they remembered that what was written about him matched what was done to him.     The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb, raising him from the dead, was there giving eyewitness accounts.   It was because they had spread the word of this latest God-sign that the crowd swelled to a welcoming parade.”    (John 12:12-18 - The Message)    

The walk down the curving road is very steep.    The Kidron Valley is impressive now.   But even as we walk we remember that it’s only about half as deep as it once was.    Forty years or so after Jesus ascended, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and much of the debris of the city was pushed into the Kidron Valley.    How incredibly impressive it must have been in Jesus’ day!     Half way down our slightly-precipitous walk, on our right, we pass a beautiful chapel that commemorates the site of our Lord’s weeping over the city.    The chapel is constructed to resemble a tear.     Down, down we go, passing gorgeous bougainvilleas, to the base of the Mount where we enter the Garden of Gethsemane.     The Garden is filled with olive trees, some of them very old, like hundreds of years old.    It was under the “parents” of these self-perpetuating trees that Jesus agonized over the cup.     All four of the New Testament Gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John gave the account.     My wonderful mentor, the late Evangelist Jack Shuler, wrote:   “That God should be found in an earthly garden is wonder enough; that He should be discovered in the throes of conflict over a cup is unfathomable!    He whose hands once formed the stars and fashioned the pattern of the nebulae now holds a cup.    He whose mind, in the dim recesses of eternity, conceived a universe and calculated a plan for the ages now shrinks from a cup.    He who existed before Abraham and at whose feet someday every knee shall bow treads the winepress alone and groans from the depths of bitterest woe, ‘Father, if it be possible, take this cup away!’”     Why did our Lord Jesus blanch at the cup?   Because He was the perfect Lamb of God in Whom was found no sin, no fault, no guile.   But in that cup was every deed of nameless wrong hatched in the black haunts of hell, every smear of debauchery and stain of iniquity, settled like thick, black dregs to the bottom of the cup.    Jesus drew back.   His flawless character was repulsed by the very sight of it.   But with trembling fingers, Jesus raised the cup.    His garments were now drench in the blood-sweat of the agony of His soul.    But wonder of it all, Jesus pressed the cup to his lips and drank the bitter contents.    My sin, friend!   And your’s!     He who knew no sin has become sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Everytime I stand in that Garden I look to the west, across the Valley, to the summit of the eastern walls.     In Jesus’ day, the towering great Temple would have been clearly evident above the walls.   Now a gate opens, and what looks like a fiery serpent slithers out and down the sides of the valley.   It is the Temple guard, led by Judas Iscariot, holding aloft their torches.     They slip across the Valley and arrive at the entrance to the Garden.    Judas betrays his Lord with a kiss and Jesus is arrested and bundled south, along the Valley, almost to the Pool of Siloam where He is bustled up the stone steps, which are still there, to Caiaphas’ house.    

It was probably around midnight when Jesus was arrested.    But the Sanhedrin would not meet in emergency session until six in the morning.   What to do with Jesus during the crucial night hours?   How to hide Him away from His adoring multitudes?     We believe that Jesus was lowered into the cold and clammy dungeon beneath Caiaphas’ house, a dungeon that is still there.    The suffering of Jesus in that awful pit was prophesied in the 22nd Psalm.     Each time I’m in that dungeon, I read that chapter in full to those there with me.     

As the sun rose that fateful day of His crucifixion, Jesus was raised by ropes from the pit and taken upstairs to the unlawful assembly of the Sanhedrin.     There false witnesses lied about Him and He was condemned to death.     But such a sentence had to be sanctioned by Rome.   So once again Jesus was trundled back down those stone steps to the Valley and taken north turning left at the Tyropean Valley (the Valley of the Cheesemakers) and taken to a massive structure just north of the Temple, the Fortess Antonia.     There Jesus would stand trial before Pontius Pilate.   Then a hearing before the insane King Herod Antipas (who was convinced in his diseased mind that Jesus was the incarnation of John the Baptist whom he had beheaded in his palace at Machaereus.    Then back to Pilate and the inhuman scourging, properly called “the near-death.”      Then to Calvary.

But as my good friend Tony Campolo often says, “Ah, but that was Friday.    Sunday was coming!”   “The first day of the week cometh Mary Magadene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.    Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter  and to the disciple Jesus loved and saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.”    Jesus had risen from the grave!     The Greek Physician Luke records in Acts 1 that Jesus was seen by so many post-resurrection, including 500 in one place.

So we celebrate this Easter season with renewed joy and fervor.     Because Jesus lives, we live, now and for all eternity.   Happy Easter, good friend.

The year was 1954.   I was a senior in high school.    I happened to be in Davenport, Iowa, where I was to sing and speak that weekend in a local church.    It was a Friday afternoon and I was just walking along a downtown street when I happened to look in the window of a novelty store.   There, sitting on a shelf, was a ventrioloquist’s dummy.     I had never seen one before - remember that television was just starting up.   I had heard Charlie McCarthy on radio, but to actually see a “dummy”?   Nope, never had.      I went inside and asked the clerk to please let me see the little fellow.   In a minute or so, I was holding this puppet, this dummy.    I asked the price - $15 dollars!!    Can you believe that?    I slipped my hands inside the dummy’s back and found the controls and the little guy came alive in my hands.    On the spot I named him Louie and purchased him.      I took him back to my room and began “talking” to him.     I used Louie in a public presentation the next Sunday morning, fewer than 48 hours after obtaining him.

Some years passed by and I approached an old college buddy of mine, Don Baldwin, then owner of Hymntone Record Company.   He has since gone on to be with the Lord.   I said, “Don, I have this little dummy - Louie.   We tell Bible stories to children.    I’d like to record them and make them available.    I want to record them with original music and incredible sound effects.”

You know, I grew up in radio days.    I listened to the Lone Ranger, The Shadow, Suspense, Escape, Jack Benny, etc., etc.     Radio fired up your imagination.   You actually saw on the screen of your mind all the action, much more effectively, may I say, than movies or television.     I wanted to record Bible stories with Louie on audio that would cause kids to see the events on their very fertile young minds.

I said, “Don….here’s the premise:   at the beginning of each story, Louie has a question or he’s in trouble or has a problem.   To find the answer to his problem, we go to the fantastic, incredible Bible Storybook Castle.   It has 66 rooms in it.   39 of them are old (The Old Testament) and 27 of them are new (The New Testament).      There is the story of a guy there, Louie, whose name is Samson.   To find him we have to go into the Bible Storybook Castle and go to the old section, to a huge room called ‘Judges.’     That’s where we’ll find your answer.”    So right away kids begin learning the Old and New Testaments, which books are where, and whose stories are in each ‘room.’”    Don thought for a long time and said, “I’ll get back to you.”    Out of Don’s imaginative brain came the whole concept of the recordings - over 100 Bible stories told (then) on audio cassettes.     Since then the stories have been remastered and released on CDs.

We now believe that over a million children have heard the Dan ‘N Louie Bible stories around the world.     In fact, there is a Dan ‘N Louie radio show in Thailand, translated into their language, heard five days a week.     In places in America, Dan ‘N Louie are heard on radio stations in English.     I have received countless letters, e-mails, phone calls and personal communications from children or their parents (or their grandparents) telling me how these stories have impacted their children.    I have had communications from teachers and school principals, informing me of the positive influence these stories have had.     I honestly believe that the writing and performing these stories with Louie ( a manuscript of over 2,000 pages, by the way!) is the single most important thing God has ever permitted me to do in a half-century of ministry.

Recently, Jim Bakker has begun promoting these CD’s on his syndicated television show.     You can obtain them from him for $15 per CD or you can buy the entire 20 CD set (107 stories - 21 hours) for $200.    The money goes to his ministry to assist him in his Master’s Commission ministry.    Here’s the toll-free number to call:   1-888-988-1588.     

Every parent or grandparent ought to seriously and prayerfully consider this investment.    Your children will bless you for it.      In the meantime, Louie and I will just continue telling the stories from the fabulous, incredible Bible Storybook Castle!!

Oh, by the way:    Louie is 55 years old now - same dummy!    However, on two different occasions I have sent him back to the factory for what Louie calls “dummy-tucks.”     He looks great!   In fact, he told me to tell you, “Hello.”

Let’s chat about Jim Bakker.    Yes, THAT Jim Bakker.    I first met Jim 30 years ago, my first year as the speaker for the Assemblies of God world-wide radio broadcast REVIVALTIME.     Jim was already soaring with his PTL television show.    I mean, brother, he was “big-stuff” with his picture adorning the cover of virtually every Christian magazine known to man.    He flew Air Force I with U.S. presidents!     I was in my fourth floor office at Assemblies of God headquarters in  Springfield, Missouri, when the receptionist called me to say Jim Bakker wanted to see me and was in the lobby.     I said, “Please….send him up.”    In a few moments, into my office came Jim.    We talked for a half hour or so and he reached into his pocket and took out an envelope.  “Dan,” he said, “use this for Revivaltime.     You have some big shoes to fill with C. M. Ward’s departure (Ward had been the speaker for 25 years) and I just want to help.”    I walked Jim back to the lobby and he left.   That afternoon I opened his envelope and couldn’t believe it!    He had given our ministry a check for $50,000!    (Bet’cha never read that in your newspaper, did you?    Hey, I could tell you a lot of positive Jim Bakker stories I suspect you’ve never heard.    You’ve only heard the big negative one.)      A few years later, Jim stood before a judge and heard himself sentenced to 45 years in prison for   “conspiring to defraud the public with lifetime partnerships to PTL.”     What an injustice!    First of all, to anyone’s knowledge, no one with a lifetime partnership to PTL was ever turned away from the place.     So where was this alleged “defrauding?”     You know, over the decades I have flown over 3 million commercial miles.  Almost invariably, while in the boarding process, the airline agent will come on the speaker to say, “We have oversold the airplane.   If anyone would like to take a later flight, we will give you a free ticket and $200″ - or whatever the package is.   If I can get to the agent before boarding, I’ll ask him or her, “Uh - what did you just announce?”    After the agent repeats the announcement I ask, “I’m confused here.  You have x-number of seats on this airplane….are you telling us that you sold more seats that you have available?”   When the agent acknowledges that this, indeed, is true, I always ask, “Excuse me, but isn’t that what Jim Bakker was sent to prison for?”    The airlines do many times every day what Jim Bakker was accused of doing, and sent to prison for doing, BUT NEVER DID!    Every person at PTL always got his or her room booking.     Anyway…..Jim spent five or six years in prison and I wrote to him.    I would love to have visited him, but he was incarcerated in the north part of the country while I live in  S. Florida.     When he was released, he spent his first month or so at Billy Graham’s house (God bless the Graham’s!!!!!) and then he came to see me and Darlene in Fort Myers.       He came to a Sunday morning service (back in the days when we only  had one service on Sunday mornings) and I introduced him.    Our gracious and loving congregation gave him a standing ovation as he met me on the platform.      Some of my ministry “brethren” got a little uptight with me about that.  “Dan, how can you have Bakker on your platform?  Don’t you know….etc., etc., etc.,”     I would always respond, “Ever read Galatians 6:1 and 2:  “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.  Bear ye one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.”      Through those halcyon years of PTL, I appeared as a guest numerous times with Jim.     And criss-crossing this world more times than I can tell you I have met people who met Christ through PTL or whose marriages were healed or their bodies restored because of Jim’s television ministry.  

But….on with my story.    I spent yesterday with Jim at his Morningside ministry south of Branson, Missouri.     There on 600 gorgeous acres of Ozark hills, valleys, streams and waterfalls, right on the Missouri/Arkansas stateline,  Jim, along with his buddy Jerry Crawford, is building one of the truly great spiritual retreats on earth (Morningside).     Jim’s television program is now seen coast-to-coast and, by summer, will exceed the outreach of the old PTL ministry.      There at Morningside, in condos, apartments and mountain cabins, people are moving just for the joy of living in the Ozarks and having access to brothers and sisters in Christ and Jim and Lori Bakker’s ministry.     Yesterday, Jim, Darlene and I got in a 4-wheeler and drove through those woods where clearing and construction for future buildings are already in full swing.    And the main building, about 250,000 sq. ft., where Jim originates his show, is done.   It is beyond gorgeous and features not only his television auditorium, but 80 magnificent condos.    Apartment buildings are also under construction as is the new Master’s Commission Tabernacle down in the valley.    If you want to see Mother Nature at her finest, visit Morningside.    Both Jim and Lori have been in our church at First Assembly numerous times and their daughter Maricella is a member of our Master’s Commission.     

I am just so incredibly proud of Jim!    Here’s a guy, who emerged from the slammer just a decade or so ago, virtually friendless (yes, most of his “acquaintances” had flown the coop) and most certainly penniless who now is again on the frontline of ministry.      Yesterday, on his television show, he introduced me as one of his five closest friends in the world.    I am proud of that.    See, real friends don’t cut and run when the going gets tough.     Jesus, our best Friend, is the pattern for loyalty.   He said, “I’ll never leave you, never forsake you.”     How can Christians turn their backs on their fellow believers when they go through valleys?     I have never understood that.     Such people are not really friends, only fair-weather acquaintances.     Political correctness and Christian friendship are a contradiction in terms.    I have been proud to call Jim Bakker my friend through good times and bad.   So…..if you are ever in Branson, Missouri, be sure to visit Morningside (about ten miles south of there on hiway 86 - just 12 miles west of hiway 65) and visit Jim and Lori at Morningside.     Or find their Monday-through-Friday television show in your local area.     I hope you get to meet Jim someday.    And if you ever have him as a friend…..you’ve got a friend forever.

This is not a tirade against capital punishment.   Quite frankly, I remain ambivalent about it.    There are periods of time when I oppose it and other times, when I hear of some truly hideous crime, that I support it.    No, this blog concerns the application of the death penalty.    

This past week in our city, a man was convicted of murdering two people.     The jury ruled that the crime was premeditated.     Yet their recommendation to the judge was that the alleged killer be given a life sentence.    OK, I have no problem with that case.    However, as I have written in an earlier blog, I spend a weekend every other month on Florida’s death row where over 340 men are awaiting the lethal needle.    Some of these guys I know personally and know them rather well.     Were they guilty of murder?    Juries said, “Yes.”     One of them in particular, whose case has been shown in a two-hour NBC documentary (and shown three times now, by the way) was convicted of kllling one man.    Yet his jury recommended he die.     How is it that one man can purposely kill two people and get life in prison, yet another kills one man and gets the death penalty?    Pleases tell me how that makes any logic whatsoever?    

I am not arguing that these people are innocent.   Nor am I trying to abolish the death penalty.    But why is it applied so arbitrarily?     Why does one man get the needle and another, who kills twice as many people, get life?     Perhaps some this situation can be attributed to the skills of defense lawyers.   Perhaps it can be laid at the feet of tender-hearted juries and judges.     I frankly don’t know, nor understand this gross inequity.       If the death penalty is a legitimate punishment, then it should be administered on a consistent basis; otherwise, it should be cast aside.

There is one death penalty, however, that will be applied fairly.    Romans 6:23    ”For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”    Ezekiel 18:4   ”….the soul that sinneth, it shall die.”     There will be no appeals at the Great White Throne Judgment on that awful day when the books of our lives will be opened by divine hands.     Thank God, our sins can be covered now, during our lifetimes, by the precious blood of Christ.    But after we die - the judgment before God.   While we yet live in this life, we can be justified by faith in God’s provision for salvation, cried Habakkuk and Paul - just-as-if-I’d-never sinned at all.      But woe be to that one who has never availed himself or herself of the freely-given salvatin of our Lord.    Because, friend, that death penalty will be very fairly and consistently applied - not like the pathetic way it’s administered by us mortals.

Last Sunday, Feb. 15th, it was my privilege once again to speak at James River Assembly of God in Springfield, Missouri.  Actually the church is located in Ozark, Missouri, a Springfield suburb to the south.    The pastor is John Lindell.     I can remember a few years ago when a small group of people began meeting in a tiny shopping center located near the James River, hence the name of the church.    I doubt if there were then more than 100 people who attended the gatherings.     Then the congregation called a young pastor, John Lindell, and his wife Debbie, to be their pastor.     Today, James River averages over 9,000 in attendance (that’s by actual count!).      Their missions offering last week in cash and faith promises was $3.5 million!    Yes, even in these days of national and global recession.

Let me tell you why I love that church and its young pastor so much:

1)     The church rocks with FAITH!     Hebrews 11:6 states flatly that without faith it is IMPOSSIBLE to please God.     In preaching in about 1600 of our Assemblies of God churches in this country over the past fifty years, I can tell you that faith is in short supply in the majority of those churches.    They are governed by the economy and short-sighted vision, rather than being governed by God’s directives for the local church and supported by supernatural faith (which comes by studying God’s Word).     Sometime this year, Pastor Lindell will launch a satellite campus and ask at least 1,000 of their congregation to leave the mother church to attend the new work.    Imagine that!   Giving up 1,000 people to start another church.

2.    Pastor Lindell has vision for God’s will in that city.    Proverbs teaches us that without vision, people die (perish).    Vision is not WHAT you’re going to do but HOW God wants you to do it.   Every pastor worth his or her salt will tell you their goal is to reach their city for Christ.  But when you ask them HOW they plan to do that, they look at you glassy-eyed, like a deer caught in the headlights of an onrushing 18-wheeler.      John Lindell knows WHAT God has called him to do and HOW God wants it done.     That, my friend, is vision.  Anything less is just dreaming.

3.    James River is open to change.   Boy, are they ever!     Rather than attempting to be traditional same-old, same-old, the congregation is open to doing whatever they must ethically, morally and scripturally do to win the lost.    Literally hundreds upon hundreds of people are saved there every year.    Each time I walk into that pulpit, I know that I am preaching to many people who were not there the last time I spoke, but who have since been saved and discipled in the ways of God.

4.    James River is a MISSIONS-MINDED church.     Christ’s great commission of going into all the world to preach the gospel was NOT A SUGGESTION!   It was a divine command.    Yet about 20% of the churches in our fellowship never give a dime to missions over the course of a year - which means that not even their pastor supports missions.     Missions is the heart-beat of God.   Missions should be the priority of every church.     It is at James River!

I leave James River refreshed, invigorated, and “younger” than when I entered.     I salute Pastor Lindell and all his eager, delighted and enthusiastic staff.     Would God that every church that bears the implication of being “Pentecostal” were as out-reaching and triumphant as that church!

I graduated from Central High School in Springfield, Missouri, at the age of 17 in June of 1954.   It was a huge school with over 3,000 students, the only high school, in fact, in the city.     That fall I enroled at Central Bible Institute on the north end of town.    To help pay the tuition costs (no board and room as I stayed at home with my folks just three blocks north of the campus) I got a job with a local radio station and also one at the Assemblies of God headquarters.     It paid a whopping buck an hour.    The radio job paid far better, but at headquarters I got to meet and know most of the “honchos” of the Assemblies of God, including Thomas F. Zimmerman, who later became the General Superintendent of the fellowship and hired me to speak on Revivaltime (the 600 station radio network program) in late 1978.    In ‘54, the headquarters were scattered all over the north end of town.     The main offices were in an old, old structure on Pacific St.   It still stands, although it’s shuttered down and condemned.     (That’s a shame, I think, because it could bought for a song, renovated (for a lot of money unfortunately and turned into the Assemblies of God museum - but I’m about the only person who’s ever been interested in that project.)     The printing plant, the Gospel Publishing House, stood several blocks away on North Boonville Avenue.     It’s one of the largest publishing outfits in the nation even now.     Then there were a number of other smaller buildings that housed various and sundry offices.   In the early 60’s, the main headquarters building was erected on Boonville Avenue connected directly to the Publishing House structure.    It stands four stories high, but the printing plant is six stories and is connected by an across-the-street overhead to a massive distribution center.   So the Assemblies of God headquarters covers two city blocks (plus some other buildings nearby) and employs about 1200 people.     

In 1977, Darlene, the kids and I moved back to Springfield from Sandusky, Ohio, where we had opened a new church, Calvary Temple.    I was hired as the radio/TV director for the Assemblies and a year or so later invited to be the speaker on Revivaltime, a post I had the privilege of filling for the next 17 years (although the last nine of them I was pastoring here in Ft. Myers and commuting).    Then 14 years ago, at one of our bi-annual General Councils, I was elected as an Executive Presbyter to represent Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and North and South Carolina.    There are 17 of us on that board, six of whom are permanent residents of Springfield and fill the offices of General Superintendent, Assistant General Superintendent, Executive Secretary, Executive Treasurer, Executive Director of World Missions and Executive Director of Home Missions.    We meet every other month for two or three day  meetings.     The committee really serves as the Board of Directors for the entire Assemblies of God.

Springfield is often called “the Gateway to the Ozarks.”    I love that country.    As a kid I used to play in those hills, roam the caves, and fish the streams.     Since being the pastor of First Assembly here in Ft. Myers, I have flown back to Springfield for business about 250 times.    I usually enjoy it, but last week was a different story.   The ice storm that blanketed much of the nation hit the Ozarks.   Snow isn’t all that difficult to navigate, but ice????    Forget it!     Some of the board members could not get in and had to listen on their phones by conference call for two days.   Now THAT is commitment!     I usually drive down to Branson to Jim Bakker’s Morningside Studios for a television program following our board meetings; however, Jim, along with much of southern MIssouri and Northern Arkansas were without electricity.   (Kentucky was also very hard-hit by the storm).     So I didn’t get the chance to see my friend Jim and all his crew.

So….late Thursday night I got back home.   I had left my car in Tampa at the airport so I had to fly there to retrieve it and then negotiate I-75 that night.    God was faithful and I got home without any difficulty.     I am grateful for all the men and women who faithfully serve the Assemblies of God at headquarters.   You may know that the Assemblies started in 1914 with a mere 300 people, but now number over 60 million around the world!      The Assemblies are now growing so fast that it’s exponential and we believe we will hit the 100 million mark worldwide in the next ten or fifteen years.   But then, that’s our job, isn’t it?   To take the whole Gospel to the whole world!