But my mother had said to me, “Evelyn, will you pray with me that when I die, the Lord will just take me in my sleep. I don’t want to have a stroke. I don’t want the devil to put a stroke on me. I don’t want to have to be taken care of, maybe not be able to talk before I go. I just want to go in my sleep.” Well, praise the Lord, that’s the way she went. She just went to sleep and went home to be with the Lord, and the Lord answered her prayer.
But there was still that little fear in my heart that I might have a stroke, just because my mother feared it, then I feared it. And I realized what the devil was trying to do because he works through your fears, and he finds those little vulnerable spots, you know that nobody else knows about but you and the devil. Well, the Lord knows about them. And if you don’t say it out loud, the devil will never find out. But sometimes we say it out loud.
OR: Don’t preach. Just tell the story.
ER: All right, I won’t preach. (Laughter) He wants all the time. Every time, he wants all the time. Anyway, I just began saying, “Devil, I won’t have this. I will not receive this. In Jesus’ name, you cannot put a stroke on me. I will not have it.” And immediately he began to pray for me, and the thing left as fast as it came. That’s why I say we don’t have to accept what God tries to put on us. (Applause)
OR: Everybody say, devil, take your hands off God’s property, me. (Response) Now stand to your feet. Stomp your right foot. Stomp it again. Stomp it again. Say, devil, take your hands off God’s property, me. Say it again, and put your right hand like this. Devil, take your hands off God’s property, me. Say me.
Me. (Response) Thank you and be seated. Brother, sister, I was learning what the thousand times more meant.
And, number seven, He said, “You tell the people to prove the Lord with their tithes and their offerings.” He said, “Only one time in the Bible have I asked people to prove Me, and that’s with their tithes and their offerings.” He said in Malachi 3:10, “Bring you all the tithes and all the offerings into the storehouse,” into the work of God, “and prove me now herewith, now herewith,” everybody say it. (Response) When is now? (Now) Now. “Prove me now if I will not open the windows of heaven and pour you,” you, not somebody else, you. Say, me. (Me) “Out a blessing where there’s not room enough to receive (or contain) it.”
The message tonight is “A Thousand Times More.” I want you to visualize approximately two million grown people, mothers holding their babes and with children at their feet, maybe closer to three million than two million people, if you count the little ones. And they are at the foot of the mountains of Moab, which is just adjacent to the land of promise, the land of milk and honey, where Moses had led these people for forty years from the land of Egypt where they were slaves to that place where they were getting ready to cross over the Jordan River, which was the dividing line, into their inheritance, into the land, into the land they were to possess, into the land that God had promised, not only these people, but to Abraham way back hundreds of years before, to the man who had the greatest faith of all up to that time and from whose faith our faith comes, from whose faith the body of Christ exists. From Abraham’s faith is the church of Jesus Christ. This is a very important point.
And Moses gets up on the side of one of those mountains and in that area, where you don’t need a PA system because the acoustical systems are so perfect in the atmosphere, and began to speak a prophetic utterance after telling them where they had come from, the land of Egypt as slaves, how far they had come, through the howling wilderness, the most desolate place on the face of the earth, and now where they are.
They are the edge of their deliverance, and yet it’s the most dangerous period of their lives because the River Jordan, an ordinary river, is at flood stage and it’s more than a half mile wide. Now it’s not an ordinary river. It’s deep and dark and dangerous. And there are more than two million people with their little ones who are to cross that flooding river in order to possess the land and to inherit the place that God had prepared for His people from which Jesus our Savior would come.
And Moses is standing there on the side of that mountain talking to them and telling them what God had done for them and had told them that he had brought them there because they had dwelt long enough on the way and it was time for them to possess their land.
Now, ladies, everybody knows what’s in your container, everybody. You want to know what my kids look like? There, it’s in my container. Everybody knows you need sustenance in your container. Every kid has a snotty nose and doesn’t go to daddy. They go to mama. We all know what that’s for.
Vitamin C, Tylenol, electric toothbrush, Band-aids, Germ-X, more sustenance. Gum. Medicine.
More medicine. Thermometer. Toothbrush, toothpaste, dental floss. Oh, of course, there’s hair friz. That would be mine.
More hand cleanser, hand and body crème, bug spray, Bengay, Listerine, hair gel, and of course Vicks VapoRub, all in the same amount of money spent on the same container. Where are the bagels? I actually had some, and we ate them. I’m so not kidding.
We can get ourselves a container that has everything we could possibly have need of, or we can find ourself a container that’s so worthless we don’t bother to waste our time.
I’m going to tell you only one last thing. Well, two last things. I found this in the car. I found it in a car all chopped up. It’s a dollar bill. I’m so not kidding. And this is how I found it.
So many of us have chopped our lives up and shredded ourselves so thin that something that actually had value once, your ministry, your family time, your anointing, your Bible reading, you’ve been shredded and shredded into so many tiny little pieces that, frankly, you’re not of any value at all. You’ve just got a bunch of little pieces.
And God showed me to do one thing. Now I need a volunteer, Billye. And God showed me a simple, simple, simple step. This is two and a quarter cups of flour. I’d like you to eat it. Would you like to taste it? Now—(blows)—not much to it, is it? Oh, it gets way better than that.
This would be baking soda and baking powder. I so love your volunteering. Good, ain’t it?
This, however, is sugar. We’re getting better, aren’t we? (Uh huh) I love this woman. Now that would be three quarter cups sugar. And anybody that knows me knows exactly what I’m coming up with. Three quarter cup brown sugar, one teaspoon of vanilla. Two sticks of butter, unsalted, if you please. Room temperature.
And then, of course, the world-famous one cup of chocolate chips. (Response) Now separate, how was that flour? How was that baking soda? Baking powder? Salt? Little bits and pieces. How would you like to eat a stick of butter? I used to eat a stick of butter when I was a kid, peel it down and eat it like a banana. I have a child that did it just like me. My mother has pictures of me as a kid, and my mother has a picture of my kid as a kid, peeling it like a banana.
Okay, all right, let’s do it. The Lord spoke to me the other day while we were sitting in the service, in fact, while Billye was talking, and said, “Call Oral Roberts University rich.”
And I said, “Okay.” Can’t we call things that be not as though they are? In some areas, we need a little extra.
And He said, “Call them rich in athletics.” He said, “Call them rich in their finances. Call them rich in students, rich in your anointing.” And as a man begins to think in his own heart, so he becomes. And out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth begins to speak. And death and life are in the power of the tongue. And they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.
And you begin to speak life into your situation. I’ve been speaking so much death into some of my situations that they’ve been dying. Duh!
But God said, “Start speaking life. I’ve set before you life and death, blessing and cursing.” And He said, “Choose life.”
And I want to tell you something. Look around the people in this room. There are people of substance in this room. Be careful who you hang with. Be careful who you share your vision with. You are known by the company you keep.
I want to tell you a story. I read this the other day. A friend of mine sent me this. And it says, “The Evangelist Billy Graham was returning to Charlotte after a speaking engagement. When his plane arrived, there was a limousine to transport him home.
“As he prepared to get into the limo, he stopped and spoke to the driver and he said, ‘You know I’m 87 years old and I’ve never driven a limousine. Would you mind if I drove one for a while?’
“So the driver said, ‘No problem. Have a go at it.’
“So Billy gets into the driver’s seat, and they head down the highway. A short distance away sat a rookie state trooper”—oh, yes—“operating his first speed trap.
“The long black limo went by him doing 70 in a 55-mile-an-hour speed zone, so the trooper pulled out and easily caught the limo.
“He got out of his patrol car and began the procedure. But the young trooper walked up to the driver’s door. And when the glass was rolled down, he was surprised to see who was driving.
Now we’re going to call in, we’re going to have the best athletes, and we’re going to have platforms in every world that there is God’s sending them into. This university is going to revive in every single one of those places.
I’m a basketball fan. Oklahoma University got beat Sunday, I’m sad to report, the girls. But the team that beat them, they had a little girl on there, Ole Miss, and she was our—Amintie Price is her name. And her mother was an old-time Pentecostal, and, boy, that little girl could run like a deer in little Myrtle, Mississippi.
But she had to wear long dresses to do it. And they wondered why on the basketball team. They just knew she’d be great, but her mother said she had to wear a dress.
Well, the home economics teacher got an old top, you know, to a basketball uniform and sewed on a little skort, and she started playing basketball. And I mean, she’s taught the world how to play basketball.
Her mother, I’m sad to say, passed away last August. They said that little Armintie Price drove every day 45 miles to visit and be with her mother. Now she got to where in college, she played, you know, just wearing the basketball suit.
They said, “Now your mother’s gone. You can just be free and do anything you want to.”
And she said, “Oh, no, my mama made me who I am.” She said, “My Lord is more real to me than anything basketball.”
So they said here’s what happens in the locker room before a game, and they went in there. She’s turned that whole team, a college team, NCAA champion-type team, she’s turned them into a gospel group. They’re called The Anointed Singers. And there they were singing, “Glory, hallelujah” in that room.
Well, I tell you who’s going to do that too. Oral Roberts University teams on every level, they’re going to do it. You may not think it’s spiritual, but it is spiritual. And we’re going to have a university here (tongues) that will give glory to the most high God in every world there is.
Send your young people here. If you’ve got a basketball player that’s about to sign with Duke or North Carolina, say, “Oh, no, you don’t, little Spirit-filled son of mine. You’re going to Oral Roberts University.” (Applause)
Those of you who have been discouraged, you’re not going to be discouraged any more. Those of you who have come broken, you’re going to get healed during these days.
You students, some of you who thought, Well, I wasn’t even sure I was going to come back for after spring because so many bad things have happened, God’s going to bring healing to you during these days because it’s His hour. It’s His time. It’s His moment, and it’s yours.
And I just want to lift my hands. I want you to join me in lifting your hands one more time. Brother Charles Green, chairman of the executive committee of the Board of Regents, I want you to come and pray. I want you to come and pray, and we’ll close out this season of prayer right now before I introduce Lindsay. We’ll close it with a season of prayer and whatever else the Lord has on your heart.
CHARLES GREEN: I have been in the ministry 61 years. Many times in my life I have been in meetings like this. And we rise to a height of great, great glory and then God’s people go home and tomorrow they are defeated because they did not make the right confession tonight.
Many of you are saying in your heart, and I heard your voice standing down here—that’s why I came—they had enough people to talk, but I heard you saying, “I wish I could be a miracle worker. I wish I could work miracles. I wish signs and wonders would come into my ministry.”
I’m going to show you how to do that right now. Do you understand that there were times that Jesus did not lay hands on people? He did not lay hands on them. He healed them with the Word, the Word.
The apostle said, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it,” the gospel, “is” what? “it is the power of God unto salvation.” And the Word is total deliverance.
All right, I want you to raise your hand in answer to my question. No, no, not yet. Put your hand down. I want you to answer my question. How many of you want to be able to declare the gospel of Jesus Christ, raise your hand, raise your hand. Keep your hand up. Keep it up.
And he said, “I want to talk to you about that scripture.” And of course what would you expect me to write down from Oral Roberts? The first word of “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen.” I’m going to write down the word faith. That makes sense. It’s Oral Roberts.
But he said, “No, I want you to skip over to the word substance.”
And I thought, Well, if you say so, because whatever Oral says, you do. So I said, “All right, Hebrews 11:1, ‘Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things that have not yet been seen.’”
And he began to give me, in my opinion, the best dictionary definition. And I realized that he has been overloading himself with the one word substance.
Now there was once when Oral got on the word it, i-t, “Give, and it shall be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over.” And he had the longest sermon I’ve ever heard preached on the word it. I think the only person that could have outdone the length of that sermon on the word it was Kenneth Copeland. So that yet remains to be seen if Kenneth can out preach Oral on the word it.
But his next one was on the word substance. I wrote 30 pages on the word substance. Now if Oral Roberts at 88 year old has done what he’s done in the kingdom of God and God gives him a word substance, you’d better sit down and write.
So I sat down, and I began to write. When I ran out of pages, I grabbed a tape recorder. And when I ran out of message on the tape recorder, I grabbed more tapes for the tape recorder.
And I began to realize that Oral was onto something. And I want you to look at the word substance. Now I don’t want to mess it up, so I’m going to read this word for word from what he studied from, Hebrew, from Greek, from dictionaries, from translations.
And then I took that material. I went back to our office and back to some of the people here that we knew that had studied the Bible and studied Hebrew and studied Greek and sat down and tried to get as much out of that one word as I thought Kenneth Copeland might get out of that word.
And I don’t think I’ve come close, but I tell you what, between Oral and the different translations, I think we’re onto something. So we’re going to talk about that tonight, if that’s okay.
Hebrews 11:1 says, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen.”
HC: Richard, I began to revisit, as we talked about in the executive committee meeting, the heart and the vision of the founder and chairman Oral Roberts. And he had in his heart to minister to those that are ministers that may be dealing with problems, obstacles, hurts. They may have had trouble, as some have said, following the leading of the Spirit in their denomination.
And he felt like in his late sixties, which Richard just said he was 68 when he founded this organization, that he could be a catalyst to ministers. And he opened himself and this ministry to draw you, to put his arms around you, to fellowship with you, to encourage you, to seed into you.
And I’ve learned so much of being a part of this ministry, and Brother Roberts’ desire was to reach out and touch you. And our theme was “Love and Unity Through Signs and Wonders.”
I believe in these last days, even tonight I believe that you’re going to experience that love and unity through signs and wonders. I believe that the signs, wonders, miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost are going to be the earmark of this latter day, this outpouring of the Spirit. We have to have it. And what better place than right here on the ORU campus.
Richard, when we came yesterday, the young man that picked us up at the airport, he was bubbling. He was absolutely bubbling. Then the young man that took us from the hotel to the cafeteria and brought us back, he was driving the bus. He’s a graduate of ORU, just graduated. He said, “Pray for me because I am going to be”—he’s from Liberia. He may be here tonight. He said, “Pray for me. I am going to be the next President of Liberia.” He said, “I am believing God.”
And so during this week, I believe that you’re going to be ministered to by the Holy Spirit and that you’re going to receive something from God by the Spirit of God. Amen.
RR: I’m going to ask Pastor Karl Strader if he would come up. He’s also a member of the executive committee. Brother Strader. He was here earlier. Pastor Daugherty, would you come, Pastor Billy Joe Daugherty, and share from the standpoint of the executive committee today, what we felt in our hearts today about ICBM.
Finding Nemo, the brand-new one, within the first five minutes of the movie, mama’s dead. Think about it. And yet we sit back. How long are you going to tolerate this spirit of rebellion in the church? And yet we take it. We talk bad about other preachers. “You know Oral Roberts got his car by stealing it out of the offering. You know that, and I know that.” You know my jewelry came because I stole it out of the offering. You know that, and I know that.
Well, you know I drive a Lexus. You know I got that car because I certainly stole that sucker out of the offering. Somebody put this great big Lexus right in the middle of that offering bucket, and I stole it right out of the offering. Liar, liar, pants on fire! That man came here two years ago, never met him before in my life. The Spirit of God spoke to him, told him to buy me that car. I didn’t even know what it was. When they asked me to insure it, what kind of car it was, I said, “I don’t know.” I had to go look.
But yet other preachers accused other preachers, and while we’re sitting here accusing each other, we’re all going broke. And yet they’re making billions of dollars to hit a ball with a bat. Give me a bat. I might not be good, but I might not be bad. Am I in the wrong profession? Am I serving the wrong God? Are you in the wrong profession? Are you hungry? Are you sick? Are you tired of your belly aching? Are you tired enough to stand up and say, “I will not tolerate the spirit of Jezebel in the church any more. In the name of Jesus, you lying, foul spirit, you get out of my house. You get out of my children. You get out of my church. You get out of my Christian school. You get out of Oral Roberts University.”
Start to support Richard Roberts. Why? Because he’s my husband? No. Because he’s sending young kids to the nations of the earth, like Jude Fuquay, who is changing the face of Seattle. Did Timba and Puma ever change the face of Seattle? Did they ever get anybody saved or healed or delivered or set free?
Let’s go over to Tiger Woods. His current worth is $212 million. He won eleven tournaments in 2000, nine on the PGA Tour, earned him $9,188,000; on the PGA Tour, $11,034,000 worldwide. He broke his own PGA Tour record of $6,616,000 in 1999. He increased his total record on the PGA Tour on the career money list to $33,103,852, and now they are estimating that he’s won over $41,213,162. And at that pace, he will be the sports first golf billionaire by the age of 50. Would you like to know what he does to calm down? Buddha meditation.
Baywatch. Who’s really watching the bay anyway? Come on. Next one, Exodus 20:4-6, listen very carefully. How many of you watch the Oscars? ”You shall not make for yourself a golden image, nor any likeness of anything that is in heaven, above the earth, or beneath it. You shall not bow, nor shall you serve it.” That is the statue that was built outside the Academy Awards.
The next one, “Dude, you’re getting a Dell.” Remember him? “Dude, you’re getting a Dell,? Benjamin Curtis, the actor who gained fame and occult following known as the slacker Steven in the commercials for Dell Company, was now arrested for buying marijuana. That was February 11, 2003. A day in the life of. My Bible says, “This is the day that the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.” Howard Sterne, A Day in the Life Of, earned $16,949 per hour that he is contracted out. Shoes, I love shoes. I’m wearing a pair of Stewart Weitzman shoes. Stewart Weitzman has women buying over 1.5 million pairs of his designer shoes every year. He’s famous for his $2,500 multicolored jeweled shoes that are at the Emmys. This year he did a million dollar diamond shoe, and next year he’s promised the Emmys the same million dollar ruby shoes.
Somebody come up. Wait a minute, wrong shoe. Now I bought these shoes-they’re Stewart Weitzman. They’re brand-new. They’re the jeweled version. They’re not the big fancy, but they’re a very, very fancy version of Stewart Weitzman. And I bought them brand-new. You can see by the bottom of the heel they’re new. And, Brenda, can you read that? Come here. I want you to see what I paid for them. I bought them at a resale shop. You all think, “Oh, my word!” No, they’re were brand-new, in the box. How much did I pay for them? Can you read the price?