We were in Jamaica and invited a certain minister from the United States to come preach. There were at least ten thousand people in the racecourse. He set up his platform and preached. This man had one of the most powerful ministries I had ever seen. He would pray for people and all kinds of miracles would happen right before your eyes. But he also had a certain weakness. There are some weaknesses that disqualify you from using your gift, but there are some that don’t. They hurt you and hurt you and hurt you until you might come to the point where God has to take you out to save your life. This man was in a place like this. He drank. He would preach and the power of God would come down. All manner of wonderful things would happen. But when he went home at night, he would hit the bottle and pass out in a drunken stupor until the next day. By night he was sobered up and ready to preach again. We did all we could to stop him, yet he wouldn’t stop. He destroyed every barrier that was put up. Every barrier! He went from one church to another until he formed his own organization and became the head of it. Nobody could stop him then.
We invited him down to Jamaica to preach and he was doing a wonderful job. Hundreds, thousands of people were being slain in the Spirit and delivered. The Bishop’s son, in the church I was in, got leukemia. In those days, they didn’t even have half of the science they have now to help and so the doctors gave up on him. He was in bad shape, actually dying. There was only one hope we had and the hope was for the church to get down on their knees and pray for the boy. One day the representatives of the church went to the Bishop and said to him, “Let us take this child to see Brother So-and-So tonight in his prayer line. Maybe God will hear our prayers. He has the gift of healing.” The brother said, “I’d rather my child die than let that brother pray for him!” And so it was, the child died.
The mighty preacher died afterwards, too. He got to a point where God had to take him out. He would do too much damage and most probably even lose his own soul. You can get to a point where God blesses you with death and takes you out. We always look at death as such a cruel or awful thing, but I have to say I thank God that there is death for those who would lose their souls if God didn’t intervene and take them out.