Therefore I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right; and I hate every false way.
(Ps. 119:128)
The reverence we have toward the Bible, the Book of life, could mean the difference in our own life between life and death.
God spoke to me while I was praying at the altar one time. He said, “After you preach your next meeting, you’ll go into the city of Dallas for a meeting. After you preach that meeting, you’ll come back to a certain place [He named the place] for a meeting. While you’re there, a pastor from hundreds of miles away will call and want you to come. I want you to go there to him.”
I wrote it all down, dated it, and put it in my billfold. I didn’t say a word to my wife or anyone about it. Well, everything came to pass exactly as the Lord had spoken to me.
Now the pastor who called me wanted me to come and minister to his wife who had terminal cancer. I did just that, but she didn’t get healed. Now it would seem that since God so miraculously led me there, she would have been healed. But she wasn’t.
She was a Bible teacher and people loved her. She used to be a schoolteacher before she married this preacher. The congregation would rather hear her preach than her husband, because she was such an expert on the Bible. She said to me, “I’ve studied every subject in the Bible except faith and healing. I’ve never studied one thing about those two subjects.”
When I left her, I went down the road weeping because I knew she had failed to receive. I knew she would die at forty-three years of age.
I said to the Lord, “You led me in such a miraculous way. I thought she would be miraculously raised up.”
He said, “I sent you there to endeavor to get truth in them [her and her husband], but they didn’t listen. And when they stand before Me, as all Christians must stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ, they can’t say they didn’t know, because I’m going to point out to them that I moved on them miraculously to contact you. They didn’t even know you. I just moved on them by My Spirit. And I did My best to help them, but they wouldn’t listen.”
Confession:
Father God, I reverence Your Word. I esteem all Your precepts highly. I put them first place in my life.
Excerpt permission granted by Faith Library Publications
Rev. Hagin served in Christian ministry for nearly 70 years and was known as the "father of the modern faith movement." His teachings and books are filled with vivid stories that show God's power and truth working in his life and the lives of others.
Rev. Hagin was born on Aug. 20, 1917, in McKinney, Texas, a son of the late Lillie Viola Drake Hagin and Jess Hagin.
Rev. Hagin was sickly as a child, suffering from a deformed heart and an incurable blood disease. He was not expected to live and became bedfast at age 15. In April 1933 during a dramatic conversion experience, he reported dying three times in 10 minutes, each time seeing the horrors of hell and then returning to life.
In August of 1934, Rev. Hagin was miraculously healed, raised off a deathbed by the power of God and the revelation of faith in God's Word. Two years later, he preached his first sermon as pastor of a small community church in Roland, Texas.
In 1937, Rev. Hagin was baptized in the Holy Spirit and began ministering in Pentecostal churches. During the next 12 years he pastored five churches in Texas: in the cities of Tom Bean, Farmersville (twice), Talco, Greggton, and Van. In 1949, he began an itinerant ministry as a Bible teacher and evangelist.
During the next 14 years, Jesus appeared to Rev. Hagin eight times in visions that changed the course of his ministry. In 1966, he moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he opened a ministry office. That same year, he taught for the first time on radio—on KSKY in Dallas. In 1967, he began a regular radio broadcast that continues today as Faith Seminar of the Air. Teaching by his son, Rev. Kenneth W. Hagin, is also heard on the program.
In 1968, Rev. Hagin published the first issues of The Word of Faith magazine, which now has a monthly circulation of more than 250,000. The publishing outreach he founded, Faith Library Publications, has circulated more than 65 million copies of books by Rev. Hagin, Rev. Hagin Jr., and several other authors worldwide. Faith Library Publications also has produced more than 9 million audio teaching tapes and CDs.
Other outreaches of Kenneth Hagin Ministries include RHEMA Praise, a weekly television broadcast hosted by Rev. and Mrs. Kenneth W. Hagin; RHEMA Correspondence Bible School; RHEMA Alumni Association; RHEMA Ministerial Association International; RHEMA Supportive Ministries Association; the RHEMA Prayer and Healing Center; and a prison ministry.
In 1974, Rev. Hagin founded RHEMA Bible Training Center USA and in 1976 moved the school and ministry offices to Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, where they remain. To date, RHEMA Bible Training Center USA has 23,000 alumni, and RHEMA Bible Training Centers have opened in 13 other nations: Austria, Brazil, Colombia, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Peru, Romania, Samoa, Singapore, South Africa, and Thailand. Together, the 14 schools have more than 28,000 graduates worldwide.
RHEMA Bible Church, pastored by Rev. Hagin Jr., began holding services in October of 1985 on the RHEMA campus in Broken Arrow and has since grown to become a thriving congregation with more than 8,000 members.
Rev. Hagin's daughter and son-in-law, Pat Harrison and the late Doyle "Buddy" Harrison, founded Harrison House Publishers in 1975 and Faith Christian Fellowship International Church in 1977. Both organizations are based in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Until shortly before his death in September 2003, Rev. Hagin continued to travel and teach throughout the United States and into Canada conducting All Faiths' Crusades and other special meetings.