An Interview with Richard Roberts Shocking Stories Revealed

Who do you feel was the most influential person in your life? That's not fair. It would probably be your mother. That's just not fair. Remember Kathryn Kuhlman. She told me that she would see someone being healed in her spirit and then she would just say it. And then years later that began happening to me. He said, you feel a power coming up in your chest. It will come up into your throat and when you speak, people will be healed. You have spoken to crowds of up to several hundred thousand people. Yes, yes. And T.L. Osborne also taught me never allow there to be a space between the stage and the people. He said because that gives the devil an opportunity to act up. Are there certain crusades or events that happen in those crusades that just really stand out as like almost above the others? Yes. Do you have time for a story or two? We have time. We're blessed to have Dr. Richard Roberts, Evangelist Richard Roberts. And we're so blessed to have you here, Brother Roberts. Thank you very much. Glad to be up here in this area of the country and get out a little bit of the heat that we have in Oklahoma. We have summer in Oklahoma. We don't mess around. We have summer. You surely do. So we're going to do something different today. We're just going to share. I want us to talk about some of your life and your experiences. And as I said before, we went on, I want you to just share from your heart. But I want to start off with asking you about your mentors in the healing ministry. And I know you had several. So share about some of the people who obviously your father, but who had a great impact on you and who were a mentor in one way or the other in regards to the healing ministry. Well, you mentioned my father, Oral Roberts. Of course, he was my number one mentor. I grew up under his ministry in the great tent cathedrals across America and Canada and other nations. That's where I learned about the healing ministry. And I couldn't wait for him to finish preaching. So he would begin to pray for the sick because oftentimes he would call me up and have me stand by him while he was praying for people. And I was learning kind of on the job training, you might say, not having any idea that I would be involved in the healing ministry someday. I just love the healing ministry. And I studied him and taught what he did under the authority of the Holy Spirit. And then other people like Catherine Kuhlman. As I got into my 20s, I met Catherine and we hit it off. And she began to teach me about the operation of the word of knowledge. Whereas my father had a laying on of hands ministry. So I learned that through him. I learned about that in the Bible, then I learned about the word of knowledge and more of the gifts of the spirit through Catherine. And traveled with her and spent a great deal of time with her. And she was not like some others who wouldn't talk. You couldn't get her to stop talking. She talked a lot. And she felt like I was like a son to her. And it was a very, very wonderful thing. And then John Osteen, Joel Osteen's father, Pastor John Osteen was a tremendous mentor to me. And he taught me more about using my faith. And then Kenneth Copeland has been a mentor to me and Kenneth Hagen has been a mentor to me. Kenneth Hagen used to ask me to speak at the camp meetings, which I did several times and also on campus at Ramah in Tulsa. And so those are some of the mentors that have been a great influence upon my life. And I thank God, you know, those mentors are, with the exception of Copeland, they're gone. But Kenneth is still a mentor in my life. And of course, I speak at his minister's conferences each year. And the Roberts family and the Copeland family have been very close for many, many years. He was the one who prophesied over me when I was running away from God as a 19-year-old. And he prophesied that I was coming home. He said to my dad, Richard is not running from you, he's running from God. And he's coming home. And within a year, I was home. And Kenneth means a great deal to me. And there are some others, but those are the main ones that have spoken into my life. Now, I know you had mentioned in the past that on overseas crusade evangelism, that you were able to glean a lot and receive from Dr. T.L. Osborne. Well, I should, I'd be derelict in not mentioning him. T.L. Osborne taught me how to do overseas crusades. As you will recall, his main office was in Tulsa, only a few miles from where I lived. And I spent a great deal of time with him. I would go into his office and just sit there in the chair and listen to him tell stories about what he did overseas. And he knew that I had a call to nations. He knew that I had a word of knowledge ministry like his, and particularly a gift of healing that flowed through him in mass prayers. And so he taught me how to do that. And that's where I learned how to do overseas crusades was through him. Now, on the overseas crusades, you have spoken to crowds of up to several hundred thousand people. Yes, yes. Now, are there any, I'm sure there are many, but are there certain crusades or events that happened in those crusades that just really stand out as like almost above the others? Yes. Do you have time for a story or two? We have time. I was up in Jos, Nigeria, which is in the northern part of the nation, predominantly Muslim. And I was invited to do a debate with three Muslim clerics. Now, this was something that I'd never done before. I was in my young thirties. And so I said to the Lord, what do I do? I've never done anything like this with a Muslim cleric. And I said, I don't want to offend them. But at the same time, I don't want to take a back seat in my Christianity. And the Lord said, well, don't ask their questions as much as you just tell them about me and what you've seen me do and what I'm going to do this week in this city in the crusade. And so they tried to trip me up theologically, but they couldn't get me to talk about that. I just talked about the healing ministry. And I just kept looking at the camera and saying, if you want to see this for real, come out to the crusade. Well, the next night we opened the crusade. We were in an outdoor field, a stage, and in an outdoor, like a soccer field. And there were, you know, light poles and light standards. And there were microphone speaker poles out there and typical kind of African crusade. We had started with about 15,000 people the first night. And there were a lot of miracles. And I always brought the miracle testimonies up on the platform to share because the more people can see testimonies and hear testimonies of healing, the more the crowd grows. Now, T.L. Osborne taught me that. And T.L. Osborne also taught me never allow there to be a space between the stage and the people. And I'd say to him, why? He said, because that gives the devil an opportunity to act up. He said, don't have a front row of chairs. Let the people stand right up against the platform. So the devil doesn't have a chance to operate. So we were doing that. And the crowd was, if you can imagine, the crowd was 360 degrees around me, 15,000 people. And the next night, the second night, the second night, there were probably 20, 25, 25,000 people. So a huge crowd. And the second night, the Lord gave me a word of knowledge about someone in the crowd who was crippled that was being healed. I didn't know who it was. I just gave the word. And after a while, maybe five or 10 minutes later, the crowd sort of parted. And a young man came walking, jogging and running through the crowd. And the crowd began to cheer and rejoice. And I had no idea what was going on. I'm on the platform with my interpreter. And this young man came up to the platform and came up the stairs and started running back and forth on the platform. And the crowd was going wild. And I said to the interpreter, what is this? What's happening? Well, he told me the story that this young man was a crippled. He had never walked. His parents carried him to the post office each morning where he begged for money. Everyone in town knew him. Many of them had given him money and he had never walked. He had never stood up in his life. Now he's walking and he's running. Well, now I'm jumping and rejoicing about this time. And he just went back and forth, totally healed. Well, the newspapers were there and they got his testimony and they interviewed me afterwards. And the next morning, they put that as the headline on their daily newspaper. And the next night, about 50,000 people came for the service, the closing night, three nights. And that night when I gave the altar call, about 25,000 Muslims gave their hearts to the Lord. That's probably, if not one of, possibly even the greatest miracle that I have seen in my ministry. Now I've seen other miracles like that wherever I go, but that probably stands out above every other thing that I've ever seen. It was absolutely amazing. And then we went on to several other cities and had, I think that was three cities, three nights in each city during those years. And those were some of my first crusades way back. That would have been back in the 84, I think, 83, 84. Now, I know right now you're not going overseas a lot doing crusades, but do you ever feel like the Lord's going to have you do that again in the future? You know, I don't know. Technology has advanced so much. I'm able to do things by Zoom now that I could not do years ago. For example, I recently did a pastor's conference with 15,000 pastors in Pakistan. I did it by Zoom, three days, three hour sessions, three hours a day for three days with 15,000 pastors. And the testimonies and the healings and the miracles were just as powerful as they would have been had I been there in person. Wow. Because the way that the technical aspect worked, we had cameras there where the pastors were. We had cameras where I was in Tulsa. They had monitors where they see me live. I was on a huge screen, and I had a monitor to see them. So it was like being there. And I didn't have to travel to Pakistan. All I had to do is travel a few miles from my home to our studio, and I was live with 15,000 pastors. And the testimonies are still coming in from people who were healed and delivered and had tremendous miracles and learned how to operate in the gifts of the Spirit. They learned how to practice the principles of seed faith. They learned how to pray in tongues and interpret back. And many of them said they'd never heard anything like that in their lives. Well, I never planned to go to Pakistan. But when I was invited, I said, well, let's do it by Zoom. And the lead pastors did not know how that was going to work. And I said, well, let me explain it to you, because I had done it in several other nations. And I'm doing that more and more and more. I just recently did one in Saudi Arabia like that, because it's against the law in Saudi Arabia for me to go there and have evangelistic services. But there were about 100 pastors that gathered together in a small church, which they can do in the nation. And I gave them two hours of healing the Holy Spirit and seed faith. And they said afterwards, we've never heard anything like this in our lives. But I did it by Zoom. Wow, that is wonderful. Well, thank God the technology is being used in a good way, even though the devil is using it in a bad way. Let's go back to on the mentors. Now, I was thinking about this the other day, that not that there aren't other ways to minister healing, but your father predominantly laid hands on people, laid hands on scores of people. Yes, he felt an anointing that came down his arm, his right arm. The Lord spoke to him when he was about 29 or 30. And said, you're going to feel my presence coming down your right arm and into your hand. And that will be your sign. And when you feel that, that's the time to begin to pray for people. And he poured that into me, telling me about that, learning about that. So that's the sign that God gave him. God gave me different signs, but that's what God gave him. It was a laying on of hands ministry, as you said. And then now you've predominantly flow through the word of knowledge. Like Catherine Coleman did. Yes, my father prophesied that over me. Just on the day I gave my heart to the Lord. He told me that I would have a laying, or excuse me, that I would have a word of knowledge ministry. It'd be unlike his. Whereas he had predominantly laid hands on people. I would speak and people would be healed. He said, you'll feel a power coming up in your chest. It will come up into your throat. And when you speak, people will be healed. While I was 19, I didn't know what was going on. But I learned over the years that that's exactly how God would use me and still uses me today. Now, I went to a couple of countries, Thailand and Costa Rica with Dr. T.L. Osborne. He did some crusade leadership meetings and crusades. And just in talking with him and seeing him operate, he would say, and I have to say I disagree with this, but he would say, I don't have any special gift. I don't know if you ever heard him say that. I did. And I'm thinking, well, I think he just thought I preach the gospel. And of course, God confirms it. Well, he was a very humble man. He was, but he, because he would mostly just pray in mass, and then the miracles would begin to occur. And he might say something like, people are being healed over here. But he wasn't really, per se, calling out words of knowledge. And I had read in the past, and I didn't ask him about this, but I know that F.F. Bosworth had mentored, been a mentor to T.L. Osborne. And I think he may have seeded the idea of the, you know, praying the prayer in mass, which T.L. Osborne really made that, I think, prevalent in our times. But it's, and I know you do some of that on TV as well as words of knowledge, but then you pray a prayer over TV. Well, I also learned a great deal from Brother Osborne. I know that it's not me. Now, I know that the gifts of the Spirit are not resident in men. They're resident in the Holy Spirit. But we have the Holy Spirit. So those giftings are resident in us by the Holy Spirit. Now, Brother Osborne would never admit to having that, like you said. And you remind me of a story. They would say about my father that my father had the gift of healing. And my father always denied that he had the gift of healing. He knew the Holy Spirit had it. And he would say, no, I don't have the gift of healing. And his longtime associate evangelist, Bob DeWeese, said to him one day, well, Brother Roberts, if you don't have the gift of healing, what you have will do until the gift of healing comes along. But the gifts, the gifts to healing, the gifts, plural, it's plural, remember, the gifts of healing and the other gifts of the Spirit are resident in the Holy Spirit. So if the Holy Spirit is in you, and if you're born again, you have the Holy Spirit, you have access to those giftings. They're not yours, they're not your property, but you have access to them. So I don't have the Word of Knowledge, but I have the Holy Spirit. So therefore, I have access to the Word of Knowledge whenever the Holy Spirit manifests it. I can't make it happen, but I can sure be available for it to happen. And I can flow with that gifting when the Lord wants me to do it. And in my experience, it happens in different places. A lot of times people think, well, it only happens in a service. It happens in other places as well. It happens sometimes when I don't want it to happen. Like in a grocery store or a restaurant? In a taxi cab. It happens in places that I think it's out of place, but apparently the Lord doesn't agree with me. So I've learned how to obey. Praise God. You mentioned one of the greatest miracles you saw is all 25,000 Muslims getting saved, and that's hard to top. What are some other great miracles, something maybe you actually witnessed or that you were a part of that just stand out as some of the top in your life? So many of my crusades were in Africa. I probably conducted at least crusades in at least 15 different African nations because those are the nations that God spoke to me about. Now, I've had crusades in Asia. I've had crusades in India. I've had crusades in Europe. I've had crusades in Central and South America, but I've had more crusades in Africa, perhaps maybe because I was so close to T.L. Osborne, and he spent some 30 years ministering in Africa. His name was a household word in Africa. But I was in the nation of Niger, and Niger is at the southern end of the desert there, and it's the hottest nation on earth. They get temperatures up to 125 degrees in their summer. I was there in the winter, but we had a big outdoor field, and it's almost 100% Muslim nation, and it was a miracle that I got in. No evangelist or Christian minister from outside Niger had ever been allowed to conduct a public meeting, but the way I got in was we made an appeal through humanitarian grounds. We took a team of doctors and nurses, and I took an eye surgeon, cataract surgeon, and as well as medicines and food. So they allowed me to come in, and I said, well, I want to have a crusade, and they let me do it. So it's the first time it ever happened. I'd been contacted through missionaries that were there to come in. So we did, and on the first day, I was getting ready for the service that night, and we were driving through the city, and the Muslim mullahs were on their loudspeaker systems, and they were talking. Of course, they were speaking in their own language, which is Hausa, the native language is Hausa, and I said to my driver, what are they saying? Because I heard them speak in their language, then I heard my name, and he said, well, they're saying do not go to the Richard Roberts crusade tonight. There will be no miracles. We had had placards and standards all over the city saying expecting miracles, and they were saying there would be no miracles, and I just kind of laughed because I knew what was going to happen. That night, there were 10 or 15,000 people for the first night, and there were seven deaf people that were healed. Praise God. And then the second night, there were seven or eight blind people that were healed, and I had them all come up on the platform and give their testimonies, and the crowd was growing each night, and by the end of those three nights, there were about 35,000 people who had given their hearts to the Lord, and at the time, there were only 5,000 known Christians in the whole nation, a nation of 12 million people, only 5,000 Christians, and I had pastor's meetings, and that number has continued to grow. Niger has opened up a little bit since then, but the most amazing thing was the Muslim leaders were so upset at what had happened that after I left, I received a call from one of the missionaries. They said they brought Muammar Gaddafi, at that time was a world leader. They brought him in to do a Muslim crusade, and he had about 10,000 people for several days, but did not have one miracle, not one miracle, and I thought, God, that's really interesting. Here we go in, and we have all kinds of miracles, and I always had the people come up on the platform and give the testimony because I wanted people to know and to see with their own eyes what God was doing, but Muammar Gaddafi came in. They had a Muslim crusade and not one miracle, and they prayed in the name of Allah for miracles, but didn't have any. Well, we knew that was gonna happen, right? Hallelujah. There was another wonderful thing that happened. There was a woman in Kenya who had a basketball-sized tumor, and when I prayed for her, it just went flat. Praise God. That happened in front of about 50,000 people. It's just wonderful. It's wonderful. You can't argue with a miracle. It sort of settles the issue, doesn't it? It sure does. Now, I know we've been talking about your mentors. Besides your father, if you had to pick one, who do you feel was the most influential person in your life? It would probably be your mother. That's just not fair. Well, it would be your mother probably, but after your father and your mother, is there anyone you just had, I guess you gleaned from so many? That's an unfair question. Okay. Probably the one out of that group that I would say I was the closest to, oh boy, probably John Osteen. Okay. Had a tremendous impact upon me. I preached for him quite often. I was one of the speakers at his memorial service when he passed. He had such a profound influence upon me and upon Lindsay. He taught me so much about the word of God that I didn't know. He had a little book called the ABCs of Faith. If you ever run across John Osteen's book, the ABCs of Faith, get it, read it, devour it. He poured so much into my life. I think that's probably one of the reasons why I loved his son, Joel, so much. I loved the whole family. My dad and I put them all through school. Joel was on my TV crew when he was a student. I know them all. We never thought that Joel would follow in his footsteps. We always thought it was gonna be Lisa. Lisa is a preaching machine. When you hear Lisa preach, if you close your eyes, you can almost hear John preaching through her. But it turned out to be Joel. Nobody thought it was gonna be David either. It turned out to be one of his brothers. John Osteen had a profound effect upon my life. All these other men and women did. But then so did Katherine Kuhlman, and so did T.L. Osborne, and so did my father, and so did Kenneth Hagan, and so did Kenneth Copeland. There are probably some others that I could name. Let's talk about Katherine Kuhlman a little bit more. Most people don't know that you traveled with her, and you sang with her. Yes, I did. I was not preaching yet in those days. That was in the 70s. Now, and you believe that from not only learning about the Word of Knowledge, but do you believe you received an impartation being with her through that association? I don't know if it was an impartation during those days. It didn't come into my life for a few years after she passed. She passed in 76, and the Word of Knowledge began flowing in me in 1980. I was maturing. I was getting more into it in the 70s, and all those years were my training times, and the Word of Knowledge did not begin to flow until the spring of 1980. Lindsay and I had only been married for three or four months, and I had had an experience in a service with her. I knew that I was called to the healing ministry, but I wasn't having any miracles, and I would always pray a mass prayer at the end, but it wasn't what I knew was coming. I was like bubbling. I knew it was coming. I just didn't know when, and we were in a service one night, and I don't recall where, and the Lord gave me what I realized later was a Word of Knowledge. He started talking to me about a man's toe, and this man's toe, big toe, got healed. It had been broken, and he'd had an x-rayed, and that night when I prayed, his toe was healed, and he went back to his doctor and had it re-x-rayed, and it showed a perfectly normal toe without a break, and he wanted to know what I did, and I said to him, I didn't do anything. I was surprised that that Word came out of my mouth, and I began to realize that might be the beginning. Lindsay said, this is the beginning of your healing ministry, and so John Osteen at the time was teaching me about whosoever shall say unto this mountain, this problem, be thou removed, be thou cast into the sea, shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that the things which he saith shall come to pass. He shall have whatsoever he saith. Then John emphasized, what things soever you desire, when you pray, that's the next verse, when you pray, believe that you receive them and you shall have them. Lindsay and I took that scripture in Mark 11, 24, and began to confess, we receive a healing ministry. We didn't tell anybody. We didn't announce it on television. We just confessed it every day for months. We confessed it every day. Then a few months later, I was preaching. I was preaching a three night tour. The first night in Albuquerque, the second night in Pueblo, Colorado, the third night in Denver. We got to Albuquerque and I knew something different was going to happen. I didn't know what, I didn't know how, but I just knew it because it was just bubbling over. We'd been confessing this for months and months and months, and all of a sudden in that service, when I began to pray, I began to talk in a different way than I'd talked before. Things began to come out of my mouth that did not come from my brain. I began saying things about sickness and disease and calling it out and giving what I know now to be words of knowledge. Suddenly people in the crowd began to get healed. I brought them forward, but like I'd seen TL Osborne do, and had them give testimonies. I remember looking out in the crowd and my wife just shaking her head saying, this is what we've been praying for. That was in April of 1980. That was the beginning of the operation of the word of knowledge through me. It continued on through those next days in Pueblo, Colorado, and in Denver. It has continued until this day. I've learned so much about it because things would happen to me that I didn't understand. For example, I would feel something in my body. For example, I would be ministering and suddenly I would lose hearing in one ear, or I would lose vision in one eye, or suddenly I felt like my shoulder came disjointed, or suddenly it felt like my knee twisted and turned. I knew it wasn't me doing it. What I learned over time was that whenever that happened, that was God giving me a word of knowledge. I learned that when those things happened, I had to stop and say out loud what I was feeling, that that was someone in the crowd who was experiencing that kind of problem and they were being healed. If I didn't stop and say it, I would begin to stutter and I couldn't get anything else to come out of my mouth in English until I said what I felt and what I saw in the Spirit. Over the years, I learned that's how the word of knowledge works through me. Now, I don't know how it works through others, but that's how it works through me. I feel something in my body, then I see it in my Spirit, and then I say what I felt and what I saw in the Spirit, and someone is healed. Sometimes it's multiple people. Sometimes one word of knowledge causes many miracles. I remember once I was preaching for Creflo Dollar in Atlanta, and so I gave a word of knowledge about backs being healed, and 500 people, we counted them, 500 people came to the front testifying they were healed in their back by one word of knowledge. So I've learned to be very sensitive and oftentimes if I think I miss it, I'll say, now, Lord, would you give that to me one more time? I want to make sure because I want to be correct. I don't want it to be just me. But when you're standing there and all of a sudden you lose hearing in one ear, you get an idea something's going on. So are you saying that that's entirely how it works through you? For me. It's not like you don't have a word that comes into your mind or that you pick up this particular word. Somebody's got arthritis or someone has something more specific. Well, you may hear me say that, but what has happened before that you haven't known, and that is I have felt that arthritis in my own body, in that part of my body. I have felt that pain physically. And the moment I feel it, then I see someone in the crowd, not in the crowd, I should say in my spirit, but not in my physical eyes. I see someone with that affliction and then I say it, and I'll have that pain in my body until I say it. And when I say it, then that pain leaves me and that person starts getting healed. And I say, whoever you are, come up here and give a testimony. Or where are you? Wave your hand at me. And it is amazing. And it's more amazing to me probably than the word is happening to. It's supernatural. I can't make it happen. Sometimes it happens when I don't want it to happen. Sometimes it doesn't happen when I want it to. I realize I'm not in charge. Now, with Catherine Coleman, I mean, I know the word of knowledge can operate in different ways. But with the same results, was it like that with her? She told me, of course, those of you who are old enough to remember Catherine Coleman, she did not enjoy preaching. She preached, but she didn't enjoy preaching. She couldn't wait for the healing service to come. She wouldn't preach more than 10 or 12 minutes. And all of a sudden, the word of knowledge would begin to flow. And then she would go into the healing ministry for the next two or three hours. Just on and on and on. And she told me that she would see someone being healed in her spirit. And then she would just say it. And then years later, that began happening to me. That's very interesting. Is there a trait about Catherine Coleman that just stands out? I know she was a little eccentric. You know, some would say she's peculiar. A little? A lot eccentric. A little dramatic, right? She would float. She wore these long dresses, chiffon long dresses down to her ankles. And she just, like she floated on the platform. And people would just rise up, you know, when she'd come on the platform. She carried such an anointing. And I'll tell you a story. The first time I ever saw her, and I had heard about her, I'd seen her on television, but I didn't know what to think about her. I wasn't critical. I just didn't know what to think. I didn't know what to think when I saw her wave her hand and somebody hit the floor. You know, I didn't know what to think. I never experienced that. That didn't happen in my dad's ministry. And I'd never been with anyone that it did happen through. So my dad was asked to speak at the annual national conference for Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship in Washington, D.C. at the Old Sheraton Hotel. And my dad had the evening service and Catherine had the afternoon service. And I had my World Action Singers with me. And we were, this is long before I was preaching this in the early 70s. And Catherine's service was running late. So we came downstairs to do our sound check. We were waiting in the wings over here. And it looked like a combat zone. There was hardly anybody in the room of 2,000 people standing. Everyone's on the floor. I'd never seen anything like that. And we're standing in the wings. And I've got 12 or 13 or however many singers I had with me. And we're just standing there. We're all watching. And some of my singers were kind of making fun of what she was doing. And all of a sudden, she closed the service. And we realized that she was going to exit past us. She had to go through those wings to get out. And I heard a couple of my singers say, well, if she comes by me, I'm not going down. I didn't say anything. I just stood there. And she came off the platform. And she's just waving her hand at people. She wasn't touching them. She'd wave her hand at people just going down like flies. And she came past us. And she just waved her hand at these two young men who were standing up against the wall. And both of them just slid down the wall, flat on their back on the floor. And she walked past me. She didn't know who I was. And she walked past me and she left. And I looked at those two guys. And I heard one of them say, well, I guess it's real. But that was my first encounter with her. Then my father brought her to Tulsa for a series of meetings. And she stayed in my parents' home. And I got to spend time with her, sit and talk with her. We had dinner several nights and I got to know her. And she took me under her wing. She saw something in me. She knew from my father that there was a calling on my life. It just hadn't been time yet. And so she invested herself into me to help me. And she helped me so very much. Wow, wonderful lady. We would go and do, she would bring me out to Los Angeles to do her television programs. And I'd sing on her program. She taped her shows at the old CBS studios in Hollywood. And it was back in the day of like, some of you may remember the Carol Burnett show. Well, Carol Burnett's stage was right next to hers. And the Carol Burnett cast would come over to watch her because they were fascinated by her. And you sit there and you see who's who of Hollywood, you know. And when she had a monthly meeting in the old Shrine Auditorium, just near the University of Southern California campus in downtown Los Angeles. And I sang in many of those meetings. And she'd pack that place out every month. And who's who of Hollywood was in the first four or five rows. Because she was so dramatic. She was so phenomenally gifted. And people flocked just to see her. And it was not unusual to see these huge Hollywood stars. She'd call them out and she'd pray for them. And they're just strung out all over the floor for an hour at a time. Actors, actresses, people from Hollywood whose names were huge in those days. Right. Were all over on the floor because they were fascinated by her. Well, we need to see more of that today, don't we? We really, I like that. I enjoyed that very much. And I had a front row seat because I was sitting on the platform. Well, I know people, I can't imagine these big stars where they, how do you explain it? They know it's supernatural because they know she couldn't be doing it. Oh yeah, well, and it happened when she would speak a word to them and they'd fall right there in the chair. You know it couldn't be her. Right. Now that's the one thing that differentiated her from my father. My father was accused of having some type of device up his sleeve because when he laid his hands on people there was a transmission of God's power. And sometimes it would, sometimes it would shoot you across the room. Sometimes it would knock you down. Sometimes it would give you like an electric jolt. And, but Catherine did not have that because Catherine did not lay hands on people. And they couldn't say, hey, he's doing something, she's doing something with her hand like Oral Roberts is. Of course my father had nothing up his sleeve. But when I was just a boy he had to stand before a district judge in Miami and swear under oath and sign an affidavit that he did not have some type of device up his sleeve when he prayed for the sick. A group of atheists took him to court and forced him to sign an affidavit. Of course, I knew he had nothing up his sleeve. He knew he had nothing up his sleeve. But they believed he had something up his sleeve when he prayed for the sick because people would like be jolted. It was like an electric shock. It was like you put your finger in an electric light socket when Oral Roberts laid his hands on you and prayed. Something was transferred through him into you. And believe me, you felt it. Wow. Well, I think maybe with Catherine and you or anyone operating with the word of knowledge and with the gifts of healing, when you speak under the direction of the Holy Spirit that power is released. And instead of being conducted through a wire, you know, like natural electricity would be, it's wireless, but it's from God. But it's going to go through without touching. Whereas your dad, the way God worked with him, it seems that he had to make contact, you know, kind of the point of contact where the point of contact is, I think is still valid with the word of knowledge. But maybe it's the point of contact is actually the word. And if the person has some sort of response on their end, possibly, you know, how does someone receive a word of knowledge? Because when you have a word of knowledge for someone, is the person always healed or is there a response on their end for them to receive? Yes, to both your questions. Okay. It's supernatural. Every time I give a word of knowledge, someone is healed. I can't tell who it's going to be. But someone is healed. And I think that their faith, however, has a great deal to do with it. Now, the one thing that really, I was going to say irritated, that's probably the wrong word, that hurt my father was that people got their eyes on his hand. Okay. And I can remember him saying, don't get your eyes on me. When I touch you, get your eyes on Jesus. It's him touching you. Yes, it's my hand, but it's him through me. But people wanted his hand. They felt there was healing in his hand. The healing was not in his hand. The healing was in God. Right. But God flowed through his hand. And people would come grab him and grab his hand and put his hand on them, thinking that it was his hand. But it wasn't his hand. Right. It was God working through his hand. But that was the sign that God gave him. And he said to me, son, you will not have to go through that because God's not going to give you a laying on of hands ministry like he has me. He said, he's going to operate through you differently. Now that doesn't mean that I don't lay hands on people from time to time. Right. But that's not my particular calling. I certainly can lay hands on people. And I do from time to time, not very often, but I do. But he said, you're going to feel it differently. You're going to feel the same power that I feel coming down my arm, but you're going to feel it through your chest and your voice. And you will physically feel power come out of your voice when you speak. And oftentimes people will say, when you spoke that word, I felt power. I felt power. You know, Jesus said when the woman touched the border of his garment, he said, I felt the power go out of me. I feel that. I feel that power that God has that's resident in me because of the Holy Spirit being resident in me. I feel that power go out of me. And sometimes if I'm walking in the midst of a crowd, I can tell who's being healed. But if I'm on the platform, usually I can't. I'm not close enough to the person to discern what's happening. But I know someone's being healed and I'll say, who is it? Now you've heard me, you've seen me do that. Who is it? Well, maybe someone here, maybe somebody on this side. I oftentimes don't know who it is, but if I happen to be near somebody, I may know which person it is. Sometimes I might miss it a person or two. I might think it's you and well, it's the person next to you. And I think that helps me to stay grounded so that I know that it's not me doing it. That's wonderful. That's a long answer. That's not, that's a good answer. I want to talk about some of the, you've met so many famous people. You've met presidents, U.S. presidents, sitting presidents, heads of state, prime ministers. You've sang with a lot of well-known singers, secular singers, other entertainers that were household names. With some of the singers you've sang with, which ones were either the most open to the gospel or that something happened or they became a believer? I know you have a lot of stories on that. I just think it's, even though I've heard some of them, I think it's fascinating. It's just encouraging to me because some Christians are afraid and intimidated by wealthy people or by famous people, that they're ordinary people and they have needs. And so I think some of those stories kind of inspire us to not be afraid to share with anybody. Well, I was so young in those days. I don't think I was smart enough to be nervous. I was so inexperienced. And my dad would say to me, we're going to do a television special and we're going to have this guest star on the program and you're going to sing with them. And I would say, okay. I was too young to be nervous. I didn't realize what was going on. And so I sang, as you said, with a lot of people and prayed for a lot of them. My father prayed for a lot of them. I don't remember a particular healing, but I remember a lot of them were deeply touched by the ministry and many of them were Christians. Some of them were not Christians, but they were open. I remember that our ministry had a profound effect upon Robert Goulet. He had just given his heart to the Lord and we brought him to Tulsa. And I remember praying for him and I sang with him. He was deeply touched by the ministry. Natalie Cole is another one. I sang with Natalie Cole, Nat King Cole's daughter. And she was deeply touched. Tennessee Ernie Ford came on our program. I sang with him. He was deeply touched by the ministry. Gladys Knight was deeply touched when she came on the program. So many people like that, that I sang with over the years. Barbara Mandrell that I sang with. Roy Clark had an affinity. Of course, Roy Clark's wife, Barbara, is a Ray McGrath. And I think she just passed a couple of years ago, but she lived in Tulsa. Roy's main home was in Tulsa and she was a devotee of Brother Hagin's. And here, Roy loved our ministry. He always wanted my dad to pray for him. I was not in the healing ministry in those days. I was just in my twenties, but I sang with so many of those stars over the years. And they all saw that we were sincere. We were not fake, we weren't plastic. And they enjoyed being on our program and we loved to have him. And I enjoyed singing with them. Those are just a few, I sang with a lot more.