“And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!” (Romans 10:15)
We have many preachers today preaching the Bible, but very few of them have been sent by God. However, in order to become a preacher and function under God – you must be sent by Him. If you are not sent by God, then you go on your own. And if you go on your own, then you are a power unto yourself. If you are ordained and sent by a church organization, then you are not sent of God. In order to be sent, you must go to the One who called you, but God is not going to send you unless you are trained. When God called me out of sin, He called me with a gun on my bed and with murder in my heart. Then, He came into my room and taught me and I remember the day when He sent me.
That day as we were talking, He asked me, “Why do you want to be a doctor?”
I replied, “Well, I want to help people.”
He said, “If you don’t go to Harvard University and don’t study medicine, but go where I send you, then you will have more healings and deliverances in your ministry than you would have as a doctor, for you will do MY WILL.”
He didn’t command me. He just put it like this and I had enough sense to know that there was no argument. However, I was trying to tell Him that He had a lot of preachers. (I am sharing with you a conversation between me and the living God sitting down before me and talking to me.) I said, “But God, You have a lot of preachers.” You know what I mean, preachers are a dime a dozen. So I said, “Lord, why would you want me? I am an accountant. I love figures. I am not a preacher. I won’t be able to preach! Why don’t you send one of those men that are preachers? I will give them ninety percent of what I make from working.”
As I said it, He was so sad. He groaned. There were just a few times in my life that I can tell you I heard God groan. When you are talking to Him, you feel the waves of His Spirit. He does not have to say words to you. He does not have to say, “I am sad.” You just feel the wave of His sadness. He behaves like a man, like a natural human being. And so He looked down, groaned and said, “They have all turned aside.”
I could not understand it. It was in 1948. Those were the heydays of Oral Roberts, Billy Graham, and William Branham. All of the mighty preachers you knew, those that came out of 1948, the year when Israel became a nation. All of those mighty men!
I think, for example, about Tommy Hicks! One day he fell exhausted onto his bed and fell asleep. When he woke up, he was preaching the gospel in Russia. He thought it was just a dream. I do not know how long he slept, but when he finally woke up back in his bed, he was dressed in his white suit all daubed up with something red. Five years afterwards, the brethren from Russia called him to come. By then, they had built several churches. He was excited because he knew he had never physically been to Russia, but he remembered the dream about him preaching there. So he took a plane and went. He carried with him the white suit that was stained up with this red substance. He couldn’t figure out what it was and the cleaners could not get rid of it.
When he came off the plane in Russia, the brethren were waiting for him to greet him. He remembered some of them. They said to him, “Come, let us show you!” They showed him the churches that were built since he left. He didn’t believe them, yet he said, “All right. I am going to believe it, if you can show me one thing.” He took out the white suit, “What is this red stain on my clothes? What is it? There is nothing I can use to take it out.” They replied, “Oh, we know what that is! It is the ‘earth’. It is from the red earth we have here. It stains.”
We have that kind of red earth in Jamaica, too. It has a lot of bauxite and is almost all aluminum ore. In one place in Jamaica they even get ninety-percent aluminum ore out of it. It is red, red, red. It stains you and there is no way to get it out. But the brethren in Russia had something they used and cleaned it. Brother Hicks said, “Now I believe!”
I am talking about the men of God! William Branham! The man was walking ten feet off the earth in his spiritual operations. It puzzled me that God said they had all turned away, for they were shooting high as far as I was concerned. Nevertheless, God saw down the road what their story was. I have lived to see every one of them having some other business to do besides preaching the Word of God. I then said to God, “All right, God. I will go.” From then He began to teach me the value of the Word. He gave me the ministry of the Word as a gift; the ministry of the Word of God.
When He called me, I was an accountant and worked with the government. The day I got the promotion to the head of the Accounting Department in the Ministry of Agriculture in Jamaica, I resigned. I remember it as today. Everybody was gone for lunch so I went into the restroom and was able to have it all by myself. There I would pray. As I prayed, I heard a voice. It filled the whole place. It echoed in the restroom. “If you do not resign now, I will kill you!” I didn’t know God could be so rough. I was not only shocked, but ashamed that He had to treat me like this. But I knew I would not be able to resist the promotion. When I came out of the restroom, I wrote my resignation and took it in to Mr. Darby who was the head of my department.
When Mr. Darby looked at it, he asked, “Did you know that you were promoted to be the head of this department?”
I said, “I suspected it, because I am the assistant to the accountant who is leaving.”
He said, “Then wouldn’t you reconsider this?”
I said, “No. God said I must go. I have no choice.”
This man was not a godly man, but He bowed his head and said, “If God said so, then do it.”
Before God sent me, He gave me a word and He had given me the same word seven times. He said, “As I was with Moses, so will I be with you. I will never leave you nor forsake you. No man shall stand before you all the days of your life. Anywhere the soles of your feet tread upon, that will I give to you.” It was a word God spoke to Joshua, but Jesus came into my room and said it to me seven times. There is no way or possibility of anybody ever discouraging me – any demon, any devil, any man! The Word of God has become a fortress and a monument in my soul and my soul became a bulwark of God! Your soul, too, has to become a bulwark for God! A walking, talking, conquering soul. A soul that is not able to be defeated, because you have the Word of God.
God called me. God sent me. God spoke to me personally and I never doubted who I was from that time until now. He allowed various men to come against me. He allowed various organizations to come against me. He allowed all kinds of satanic forces to come against me, but they never fazed me.
One of the things Jesus told me during those seven months when He was coming into my room and teaching me, was that one day He was going to send me to the United States. One day! I never moved myself until twenty years afterwards. Then when His time came, He came to me and said, “Go now!” I had a school named the Northwestern Academy down in Montego Bay on Water Lane. I had three hundred young people ready to take the exam for college. I had a farm twenty-five miles from Montego Bay at Maxfield Great House; a farm that God gave us. This was where my young men grew up. But God said, “Go.” I had to leave my pigs and chickens and the school, because God said, “I want you to go for My sheep.” Twenty years after He first spoke to me! Twenty years of suffering in Jamaica is not like twenty years of suffering in America. We suffered hunger. We walked the streets sometimes without soles on our shoes. I remember the asphalt burning the daylights out of me. But I am still preaching the gospel and God did those things to train me.
I asked God once, “Lord, how will I know those people to whom I am sent?” There were twelve apostles and each one of them was sent to a different set of people. Even now there are different apostles that God sends to different places. I, therefore, asked God, “How will I know the people to whom I am sent?” He answered, “You will know them. Anybody who believes the word I have given you is of those who I am sending you to.” I also said, “But how can I preach everything?” He replied, “Don’t worry. The prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and the teachers that I will call, they will all believe and preach the same word.”
Somebody asked me once, “How do you survive? How do you function?” I came into a place like the United States and went right contrary, opposite against the doctrines that were being preached in the churches. I have been kicked out of church, after church, after church. On one occasion, when they kicked me out, a brother was sympathizing with me. But I said, “Brother, you are wasting your sympathy. Go and sympathize with the people who missed the opportunity of having the Word of God preached to them.” He was surprised, “No, you can’t be serious! You can’t really mean that!” I said, “That’s exactly how I feel. That’s exactly what I mean and exactly what I know.” Do you know why? Because I know who I am. I know when Jesus called me and said to me, “I want you to go and preach the gospel to My people.”
Black churches have called me and said, “We want you to work with us. We want you to be our apostle. You do not have to worry about money or anything else. We will make you the number one man.” I said, “I am already called and sent. I am sent to God’s people. I am not sent to anybody with any special color! Anywhere God’s people are, those who will hear the Word of the Kingdom, there I will go.” They never understood me. I think God laughs at people who see color and things like that, because we should know that God does not have a color. The carnal man will always think of a carnal God to satisfy his own carnal nature.
I want you to know that God is seeking a people at this time and He wants volunteers. You are only going to fit the type for God to use if you can volunteer. Then when you volunteer, you have to volunteer everything – everything you have, everything you own, everything you are, and everything you ever hoped to be. That is what He wants. That is what will qualify you to be part of the Firstfruits Company. That is what will qualify you to stand with Jesus on Mount Zion. That is what will qualify you to receive the name (or nature) called “144,000”.
Sonlight Devotional 