Being obese increases the risk of developing heart disease or cancer.
Question: I am overweight, and I know that obesity increases the risk of heart disease and cancer. What can I do to fight back?
L.R. Nashville, Tennessee

Answer:When we develop bad habits related to our diet by eating the wrong foods, such as sugar (in excess), fast foods, fried foods, highly processed carbohydrates and meats (in excess), we become prone to obesity. You’re right, being obese does increase the risk of developing either heart disease or cancer.

This correlation occurs because fat cells promote inflammation. It’s an established medical fact that most heart disease and much cancer is actually caused by inflammation. Fat cells also play a beneficial role in the body–they produce substances that assist in regulating the immune system. But an excess of fat will easily outdo any healthful benefit it normally brings to the body. For example, too much fat in the body can:

When I spend time with the Africans my spiritual passion glows hotter.
The village of Ohanku is at least 15 miles from any major thoroughfare in Nigeria. When I visited there in January, our bus followed a one-lane dirt road that looked more like a footpath. I saw only two cars along the way, but several women were walking on the side of the road as they balanced bundles of food on their heads. Seeing my white face in this remote area prompted surprised looks from everybody.

When my group arrived in the village I was amazed to find almost 1,000 people waiting for church to start. They had assembled near a giant tree in the central market area; the tribal king and several chiefs and their wives were seated under a makeshift canopy. Most of the crowd belonged to different congregations but they had gathered in unity this afternoon to celebrate a miracle.

They called it “the healing of Ohanku land.” I was one of a handful of non-Africans to witness it.

The ceremony began when Mosy Madugba, a respected Nigerian minister and mentor of mine, reminded the people of how God blessed Israel when they renounced their foreign gods.

Then a frail tribal leader recited the history of the village. For centuries the people of this region had practiced witchcraft and worshiped a river goddess. Then in 1920, the chieftain explained, white missionaries brought the gospel to the
village–but local occult priests sent insects to drive them away.

“Today we are asking God to forgive the people of Ohanku for rejecting the gospel,” Mosy announced. He then asked another white minister, Jeff McGee from Texas, and me to represent the missionaries who had been expelled 85 years ago. Three tribal leaders took the microphone, one after the other, and asked for forgiveness. Jeff and I forgave them and pronounced God’s blessings on the people.

I knelt in the dirt. “Father,” I prayed in front of the crowd, “send Your prosperity to this village. Bless the crops. Bless the water. Bless the children with health and education. Let the gospel of Jesus be preached from this place.”

The healing of Ohanku continued on Sunday when we returned for a second service. This time the villagers had collected reminders of their old religion–goat skulls, sticks, chains and feathers used as occult charms–and dumped them in a huge pile.

Just as the Ephesians burned their occult books in the days of the apostle Paul (see Acts 19:19), the people of Ohanku broke a cycle of poverty and ignorance by burning their false gods. I joined with my Nigerian friends in singing worship choruses as their idols were consumed by the flames.

More joy erupted the next day when someone phoned Mosy with a report of a miracle. Some public water pipes in Ohanku that had been rusted shut for years opened suddenly the next morning.

Villagers saw the gushing water as a sign of God’s promised favor. Children began dancing in the streets.

The celebration in Ohanku is being repeated throughout Africa today. Entire communities in Nigeria are rejecting idols and embracing faith in Christ.

Only a century ago Nigeria was dominated by occultism. Today it is home to the world’s largest church and one of the world’s fastest growing denominations. Researchers say that in 25 years the global headquarters of missionary activity will be in Africa and Asia–not North America.

What does this mean for us? If we Americans want to stay in the flow of what the Holy Spirit is doing, we should learn a few things from our African brothers and sisters. We need the spiritual gifts that God has deposited in them. It’s time to stop looking at them as a mission field and recognize that the Holy Spirit has uniquely equipped them to instruct us. It is time for partnership.

The men and women I’ve met in Nigeria have forever changed my life. Mosy Madugba has taught me lessons about spiritual warfare that I never could have learned in an American setting. My friends Emmanuel Kure and Abu Bako–both of whom were attacked and scarred by Muslims after they preached in public–are models of apostolic bravery.

Many Nigerian Christians recognize that God has visited their nation and entrusted them with a serious responsibility to evangelize the world. They carry a sense of urgency that I don’t see in most Western churches. When I get close to the Africans my faith grows more aggressive, my prayers become more militant and my spiritual passion glows hotter.

Their intense zeal has nothing to do with skin color or nationality. It’s due to the fact that they have embraced a bold, raw, New Testament faith that we barely even recognize from where we sit in our cushioned pews.

When this African zeal spreads in our direction, I hope we gather around a bonfire of our own–to burn our idols of intellectual pride, racial prejudice and religious compromise. That will be a celebration indeed.

To many Ukrainians, Yushchenko’s victory was nothing less than a miracle.
A reader recently took issue with me on a somewhat sobering column I wrote about the decline of Christianity–and the concomitant rise of Islam–in Europe (“Europe at the Crossroads,” December). I wrote that Third World missionaries might be better equipped to bring Christianity back to Europe than Americans. He thought I might have been “America-bashing.”

Far from it. There are surely outstanding American missionaries in Europe. But you don’t have to be a foreign affairs expert to know that in Europe, currently, being an American doesn’t open a lot of doors.

But a powerful illustration of the larger point I was making came to the forefront during the demonstrations in Ukraine in November and December against the country’s first runoff election for president. That vote was considered by millions of Ukrainians and finally by the Ukrainian Supreme Court to have been marred by outrageous fraud and ballot-stuffing.

In the second runoff, even more closely observed by foreigners and regarded as generally fair, the opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, was shown to be the decisive winner. He picked up 52 percent of the vote compared with 44 percent for his opponent, the pro-Moscow candidate Viktor Yanukovych.

To many Ukrainians, Yushchenko’s victory was nothing less than a miracle of God, wrought by the prayers, fasting and demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Christians. Late in January, Yushchenko, praying and crossing himself, was sworn in as the new president.

You don’t ordinarily think of evangelical Christians when Ukraine is mentioned. After all, for more than a thousand years Russians and Ukrainians have looked to Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, as the fountain-spring of Slavic Orthodoxy, the tradition of Christianity that originated in Constantinople and came to Russia through Ukraine.

But since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukrainians have been evangelized by evangelicals–domestic and foreign–perhaps more than any other country in Europe. The result? There are now an estimated 13,000 evangelical fellowships in the country, in contrast with 12,000 Orthodox churches.

Even more remarkable, Ukraine has what may be today the largest church in Europe, the 26,000-member Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations (a Pentecostal church). And most remarkable, the church is led not by a Ukrainian and not by an American, but by an African–34-year-old Nigerian former student of journalism, Sunday Adelaja.

Adelaja’s story is as instructive for the evangelization of Europe as it is plain unlikely. Touched, as he says, by “an encounter with God” during his first job after journalism graduate school, he thought he might interest Ukrainian professionals and intellectuals in the cause of the gospel. They showed no interest in it–or him.

So he turned to the one group willing to pay attention to the message: drug addicts, alcoholics and the down-and-outers. Not surprisingly, many of the new converts showed such revolutionary change in their lives that their families became Christians too.

Adelaja’s church grew with amazing speed during the 1990s. It was organized into more than 2,000 home groups and emphasized the participation in church ministry of as many congregants as possible. During the election demonstrations, in addition to praying and fasting, members of Adelaja’s church brought food, warm clothing and tents to the demonstrators in Kiev’s Independence Square.

Each day’s demonstrations were opened and closed with long prayer meetings. Some Christians fasted throughout the 12-day standoff before the first election was declared invalid. Adelaja told a foreign reporter at the height of the demonstrations: “About 400 or 500 pastors are there every day, praying with microphones to the whole square so everyone could come and join us in prayer, praying for Ukraine, and fasting and preaching and giving the Christian alternative.”

Well, if that doesn’t set an example for us Americans, what does? Pray for Ukraine, and of course pray for America’s Christians (finally) to wake up from their slumber.

Fifty years ago doctors told Dutch evangelist Andrew van der Bijl that he was “too weak to travel” because he suffered from chronic back pain. That bit of medical advice now seems absurd. This veteran preacher, known as Brother Andrew by his adoring supporters worldwide, has done nothing but travel since his outreach to the persecuted church began in 1955.

So far the man who shouldn’t travel has visited 125 countries and logged an estimated 1 million miles since his first missionary trip. He’s gone through at least a dozen passports but miraculously has never lost a suitcase. He has survived one plane accident, but he says the impact of that crash in the early 1970s actually healed his back.

His amazing journey started with a drive from his home in Alkmaar, Holland, to Warsaw, Poland, where he first witnessed the suffering of churches behind the Iron Curtain. Then came Czechoslovakia. Then he drove his blue Volkswagen–which came to be known as his “miracle car”–to Yugoslavia. Next came East Germany, Bulgaria and Romania. Then came trips to Russia and China.

Brother Andrew’s travels never stopped, but they became more dangerous. In the 1950s and 1960s he successfully transported thousands of Bibles into communist countries, and a 1967 book about his adventures, God’s Smuggler, gave his ministry the worldwide support he needed to expand. After the biography increased his visibility and made it difficult for him to travel in the communist bloc, he began focusing more of his attention on the Middle East.

Today he is 76, and the organization he founded, Open Doors With Brother Andrew, has 27 offices around the world, 350 full-time employees and an army of volunteers. They smuggle 1 million Bibles to China annually and distribute tons more to 45 other countries.

That’s not too bad for a guy who was told he shouldn’t drive or get on a plane.

When Charisma interviewed him at his home in Holland recently, he was preparing to fly to Pakistan, where he frequently conducts large-scale evangelistic events. As long as his health is good and the suffering church needs Bibles and face-to-face encouragement, Brother Andrew says he must go.

Born to Be Wild

We might be tempted to glamorize Brother Andrew’s daredevil life, as if he were a Christian version of James Bond or Indiana Jones. But he flatly rejects such comparisons. “I am not an evangelical stuntman,” the white-haired evangelist says defensively. “I am just an ordinary guy. What I did, anyone can do.”

His early years were shaped by enormous challenges. During the German occupation of Holland he hid in ditches with other teenage boys to avoid being drafted by the Nazis. He often ate tulip bulbs to survive food shortages.

When he became of fighting age he went to Indonesia with the Dutch army–until a bullet shattered his ankle and sent him home. The bloodshed he witnessed in Indonesia shaped his views of war and drove him to alcohol until he surrendered his life to Jesus in a tiny room in the attic of his parents’ home. In 1950 he answered the call to ministry in an evangelistic tent crusade.

Then the real adventure began. After he told God he would go anywhere for Him, his ankle was miraculously healed and he enrolled in Bible college in Scotland. His back problems prevented him from graduating, but the lessons he learned at World Evangelism Crusade’s training center in Glasgow prepared him for a spiritual battle far more challenging than anything he experienced in Indonesia as a commando.

A defining moment came in 1957, when he pulled his Volkswagen up to a security checkpoint at the border of Yugoslavia. He had dozens of Bibles hidden in the tiny car, and he had to deliver them to desperate Christians who were starving for God’s Word. Just before the guard began the search, Brother Andrew breathed this prayer:

“Lord, in my luggage I have Scripture that I want to take to Your children across this border. When You were on Earth, You made blind eyes see. Now, I pray, make seeing eyes blind. Do not let the guards see those things You do not want them to see.”

God answered his prayer. The guard didn’t see the Bibles even though they were visible in his opened suitcase. Andrew drove his car across the border, then met with small congregations huddled in clandestine locations. He found them in Budapest, Prague, Cluj and Moscow.

There, in those dimly lit meetings, Brother Andrew met his flock. These were the people he was called to serve. They did not want sermons as much as they wanted companionship. His presence was their reminder that the church in the West had not forgotten them.

He was a heavenly secret agent on a divine mission, and he says he never once felt fear–not when questioned by snooping border guards, Russian KGB officers or–in more recent years–Saudi Arabian police.

“I have never really felt danger,” he says, his blue eyes still sparkling with youthful energy. “There really is no danger, unless you are living your own life.”

That sense of mission has kept him calm in perilous situations. Once when he preached in Colombia, guerrillas pointed guns at him throughout the sermon. In 2001 he visited the home of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the late founder of the Hamas terrorist group, and shared Christ with him. In Lebanon, he distributed Bibles to a group of hostages who were being held in a prison.

Fear is simply not in Brother Andrew’s vocabulary. Show him an obstacle and he will figure out a way to sneak past it. Show him a terrorist and he will embrace him with open arms.

For anyone interested in sharing the gospel with a radical Islamic insurgent, Brother Andrew shared this advice with Charisma: “When you see a guy with a gun, go put your arm around him and he will not shoot you. If you are far away from him it is easier for him to shoot you! That is my attitude toward any terrorist group. I have been to the Hezbollah guys in Israel. We may be the only Jesus they ever see.”

Despite such daring, Brother Andrew has been arrested only a handful of times, in Egypt, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

“But I have never lost a Bible,” he says emphatically.

No one really knows how many Bibles Andrew and his organization have smuggled into closed countries. In 1981, during an ambitious effort called Project Pearl, Open Doors delivered a shipment of 1 million Bibles to China by way of a huge sailing vessel. But Brother Andrew has disdain for numbers because churches tend to measure success with arithmetic while ignoring what really matters.

“I don’t care about statistics. I place a strong emphasis on people,” he says.

How many Bibles have Brother Andrew and his ministry distributed during the years?

“We don’t count,” he says with a shrug. “Millions. But God is the perfect bookkeeper. He knows.”

The Giant Killer

It’s no surprise that this man who has smuggled so many Bibles into unfriendly territory would have a few Bibles of his own. Actually he has more than 1,000 of them displayed in his study at his home in the Dutch town of Hardewijk.

There are French, Polish, English and Chinese Bibles, and dozens of other translations. There are tiny New Testaments (he convinced a company to publish pocket-size Russian New Testaments because they are easily smuggled) and a huge Dutch Bible, the translation of which predates the King James Version.

For Andrew, these books represent the most powerful weapon known to man, and the only hope for a lost world.

“How can they ever love the Savior if they do not have His Word?” he asks.

Brother Andrew was one of the few Christian leaders in the West who predicted that communism would fall. In the late 1970s he stated publicly that the Soviet empire would soon collapse, at a time when many American “Bible prophecy experts” were declaring that the Antichrist would emerge from the Soviet Union and take over the world.

Andrew didn’t believe such foolishness. While Westerners were cowering in fear of Soviet dominance, he was busy taking loads of Bibles into Soviet prisons and encouraging jailed pastors in every Soviet republic. He was never intimidated by anything with a communist label. To him, the Soviet regime was a noisy Goliath that would ultimately face a fatal blow to the head.

“Communism was a very stupid philosophy,” he says bluntly. “It is stupid to say there is no God. I saw the emptiness and the hypocrisy of it.”

Today, Brother Andrew is eyeing the more formidable giant of Islam, which he considers more dangerous because of its 1,400-year history.

“As far back as 1978 I was telling people that Islam will soon be a much greater threat than communism ever was,” he says. “Russia never had more than 6 percent of its population following communism. Meanwhile Islam has its own book and far more dedicated followers.”

That does not mean he is cowering in the face of the Islamic Goliath. Indeed, Brother Andrew has given the rest of his life to challenge it.

While Open Doors works in many parts of the world, Brother Andrew conducts almost all his efforts in Islamic nations. In 2004 he released his latest book, Light Force, which chronicles his efforts to evangelize the most hard-core Islamists in the Arab region.

He has distributed Bibles and copies of God’s Smuggler to gun-wielding Hamas soldiers (the Arabic version is titled In Spite of the Impossible). Yasser Arafat, who died in November, knew Brother Andrew personally and even allowed God’s Smuggler and copies of the Jesus film to be sold in a Bible bookshop in Gaza. Andrew says thousands of Arabs have read or seen the gospel as a result of his friendship with the Palestinian leader.

Though he doesn’t cower to fear, Brother Andrew has faced painful heartache through the years, especially after he became friends with Christians in the Arab world. Some of them have been martyred. Just one week before Charisma’s interview, three of his friends were murdered in Afghanistan.

Dealing with such tragedy is the most difficult part of his job. Says Brother Andrew: “Liberal Christians tell me I should just leave [Muslims] alone, but I know we must go to them. People say to me, ‘Isn’t it cruel to win converts, and then see them killed?’ I tell the liberals that it is better that these [converts from Islam] are now with Jesus in heaven than for them to be in hell.”

Andrew’s feisty, unorthodox ways often have put him at odds with traditional churches that don’t appreciate his radical approach to Christian faith or his sense of urgency about evangelism. In fact he has been kicked out of three churches during his lifetime–for being too zealous.

At age 23 he was dismissed from the Dutch Reformed Church because he witnessed to others about Christ. (The denomination at that time frowned on evangelism.) Later he was labeled an apostate because he was baptized in an evangelical church. He was also thrown out of a Baptist church because its leaders didn’t approve of his preaching to Pentecostals.

Although he is quite open about his Pentecostal experience, which occurred in the late 1950s, he refuses to describe himself as a Pentecostal or charismatic–because, he says, he “hates labels.” He has absolutely no use for denominationalism.

“Once you are out there [in countries where Christians are persecuted], denomination plays no role,” Brother Andrew says. “In China, you don’t ask, ‘What is your denomination?’ We are not playing church. That is a game that God hates.”

Love Is His Weapon

When a teenage Brother Andrew was fighting in Indonesia in the 1940s, he carried a gun and at least once participated in an ambush that resulted in horrific civilian casualties. The carnage he saw haunted him for months–and eventually brought him to the feet of a forgiving Savior.

But you won’t find a gun in his house today. He has a strong distaste for violence–and is outspoken in his criticism of most military operations, including the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq. He hopes that his new book will help convince Christians–and perhaps government officials on both sides of the Atlantic–that the only road map to peace in the Middle East involves compassionately sharing the gospel of Christ.

“The Bible is better than a bomb,” he says, hopping on his favorite soapbox. “I can’t imagine Jesus flying in an F-16. We have no right to liquidate people.”

He states clearly that he is not a pacifist, in the true sense of the word. He has always been quick to condemn violence perpetrated by Muslims, especially their grisly suicide missions.

But he doesn’t think it’s smart to fight fire with fire. He bases his strategy on Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:44: “‘Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you'” (NIV).

Brother Andrew’s insights about terrorism have paved the way for him to advise governments. During Mikhail Gorbachev’s tenure as Soviet prime minister, Brother Andrew found himself offering spiritual advice to a top Gorbachev aide.

The official, who represented the most powerful atheist regime in history, told Brother Andrew in that 1988 meeting: “If only we could go back to the simplicity of the gospel.”

Today, L. Paul Bremer, the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, calls Brother Andrew regularly. So do several U.S. congressmen, some of whom credit him for the 1998 passage of the International Religious Freedom Act, which seeks to protect the rights of all people of faith.

Knowing the Middle East as well as he does (he has visited there 55 times), he has the same advice for all lawmakers: Get smart and stop using violence.

“We are often more politically minded than we are spiritually minded,” he says. “The more you fight [radical Muslims] militarily, the more they will fight. Almost all the actions the West takes are creating more fundamentalists and terrorists.”

With a hint of frustration he adds: “Understanding Islam could have saved America billions.” Then with a boyish smile he diplomatically adds: “But I don’t like to get into politics.”

Brother Andrew has a peaceful method to resolve this conflict with radical Islam, but it is a strategy most leaders in Washington and Baghdad aren’t likely to adopt anytime soon.

“I go to them. I give them a Bible,” he says. “I give them a copy of my book. I am Jesus to them.”

Even Saddam Hussein? Even Osama bin Laden and radical Iraqi leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi? Brother Andrew doesn’t consider anyone outside the boundaries of God’s mercy.

He replies: “I believe everyone is reachable. People are never the enemy–only the devil.”

Brother Andrew will be a vessel of that love as long as he can drive a car, fly in a plane or walk through the dusty streets of Damascus or Gaza City or Cairo.

As long as there are terrorists in the Middle East–and Christian converts being martyred anywhere on the planet–Brother Andrew will go to them. If war continues to rage, he will dodge American bullets and Muslim suicide bombers to find anyone who needs the gospel.

The Fine Art of

SMUGGLING

Open Doors has perfected the art of
‘delivering’ Bibles.

Johan Companjen doesn’t like the word “smuggle.” It sounds so … illegal. But he admits that the Open Doors ministry still “unofficially delivers” millions of Bibles to countries where Christianity is restricted.

That would include places such as China and Vietnam–where many Christians don’t have Bibles and those who do are often jailed, tortured or killed.

Today an estimated 400 million Christians face religious persecution. Open Doors, founded by Brother Andrew in 1955, is the world’s largest ministry to the
suffering church. Companjen, 58, international president of the ministry, was personally trained by Brother Andrew after traveling with him for 14 years.

In this day of satellite phones and digital cameras, smuggling is not the same as it was when Brother Andrew stuffed his tiny blue Volkswagen with New Testaments. “The old way of smuggling, like Brother Andrew first did, has in some cases changed to much more efficient ways to get Bibles to closed countries,” Companjen says.

The ministry’s couriers delivered 4 million Bibles, children’s Bibles and other Christian materials to persecuted Christians in 45 countries in 2003. Some of the ministry’s workers have been stopped at border crossings or imprisoned. But Companjen says he is not aware of any of his workers who have been killed in the line of duty.

“Looking back,” he adds, “this is one of the many miracles–that we have had so few real problems.”

In a new book they co-authored, pastor John Hagee and his wife, Diana, deal boldly and honestly with issues that are destroying families today
Christian marriages are being torn apart today–by alcoholism, pornography, immorality, materialism and selfishness. But Texas pastor John Hagee, who has officiated at hundreds of weddings in his 46 years of ministry, knows that couples can stick together for life if they are willing to follow biblical principles.

In a unique new book What Every Man Wants in a Woman; What Every Woman Wants in a Man (Charisma House), Hagee and his wife, Diana, tackle some of the toughest issues facing married couples today. Written as two messages in one, the book addresses both men and women with candor–sharing wisdom from a couple who have been happily married for almost 30 years. We talked with the Hagees about their views on marriage in America and how Christian couples can avoid divorce and develop fulfilling, intimate relationships.

Charisma: It’s no secret that Christian marriages are in trouble today. What’s happening to us?

John: It’s unbelievable to me that the courthouse will give any human being with brains enough to find the front door a license to get married. My father, who pastored for 53 years, often said, “If you have half a mind to get married, do it; that’s all it takes.”

You can’t cut someone’s hair without a license. You can’t fish without a license. You can’t go hunting without a license. But to get a license to get married, a license that empowers you to create new life, destroy your life, or crush the dreams and hopes of your spouse and family, all you have to do is have $25, and you are an instant player.

Charisma: So you’re saying many marriages fail because people aren’t ready to marry?

John: There’s more to marital readiness than a blood test. How sad that we spend so many years training for a career and so little time preparing for marriage. A hasty courtship can often lead to a marriage that is a disaster.

Delaying your marriage by choice or because of financial or educational circumstances is usually beneficial. The passage of time allows all infatuation to die, while it tempers and develops true love and spiritual attraction.

Trying to escape from an unhappy home via marriage is like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. More than 60 percent of teenage marriages end in divorce. The more mature you are at the time of your marriage, the greater the probability of your success in marriage.

Charisma: You say in your book that premarital sex is a big reason why many marriages fail.

John: I have never seen a marriage built on sexual excitement that was successful. If you are building a dating relationship on sexual excitement, you are violating the laws of God as a fornicator, and your relationship in the future is doomed without total repentance and reformation.

When you become romantically involved, you experience an intense adrenaline and endorphin high. Romantic love can be very exciting. Sex ups the ante even more.

However, the body can keep the flow of adrenaline and endorphins going for just so long. Soon you become exhausted, depressed and bored.

The relationship is dumped, and you go on to someone else who will give you that same excitement. But soon that new relationship dies, also, because it has a faulty foundation.

Almost everyone has experienced the physical sensations of romance–the pounding of the heart, butterflies in the stomach, goose bumps, chills, tingling, trembling and sexual excitement. That is not love; it is romance.

Many people become addicted to romance. As a result of such an addiction, there are many disappointments in love, and many marriages fail. Relationships built on the excitement of sex alone are doomed to failure.

Charisma: You say marriage is not just about sex. But in your book you place a lot of emphasis on the importance of a physical relationship.

Diana: I tell women it is very important to show affection to your husband every opportunity you get. Take his hand when you are walking together, or pat his shoulder as you pass by him. Kiss him often. Even if it hasn’t been part of your past behavior, try beginning anew by giving him what it is you want in return.

One of the most beautiful pictures of romance I have ever seen is one I witness every Sunday morning at Cornerstone Church. On the front row center of the second section sit a wonderful man and his precious wife. They are in their late 80s. They sit so close to each other you couldn’t get a sheet of paper between them. Every Sunday they hold each other’s hand. These two wrinkled and gnarled hands are clasped tightly, and the other two hands are raised in praise and worship to the Lord.

What a statement they make! The message of romance they send every Sunday is a memorial to the love they have for each other and the love they have for God.

Charisma: You point out that men, in particular, don’t realize that women need intimacy that is not always sexual.

John: Emotional intimacy includes touch, caressing, hugging, kissing and romancing. There are approximately 5 million touch receptors in the human body. More than 2 million receptors are in the hands alone.

The right hand of touch releases a pleasing and healing flow of chemicals in the bodies of both the toucher and the touched. Studies have shown that even the tender touch of a pet dog or cat can cause people to get healthier.

My mother was a person who could hug you and make the world go away. From my earliest childhood, I watched her reach out and hug all the people she loved, and many others, too. I adopted that practice as a teenager, and I practice it to this day. I believe it’s beneficial for every person to receive affection from another person through touch.

I tell men: Without the emotional intimacy of touch and warm personal communication, sex with your wife is little more than domestic rape.

Charisma: A lot of couples say they divorced after enduring years of living together without any passion. What can a couple do if the fire has gone out?

John: The first step is to determine that both of you want to improve your marriage. Every marriage can be a better marriage.

Turn off the football game. Put down the newspaper and plan a date night. Sit down and make a list of exciting things you would like to do together, and then do it. “Insanity” defined is “doing the same things the same way and expecting a different result.” Your marriage can sizzle, but not without planning to make it happen.

Charisma: How can a couple safeguard their marriage from adultery?

Diana: In his book His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-Proof Marriage, Willard F. Harley Jr. refers to the high expectations men and women have for their marriages. Both want their needs met, yet seldom do they communicate those needs to their spouse or take the time to know the needs of the other.

I have found that many individuals try to learn to “do without” having their needs met. They would rather do without than attempt to convey to their mate their true needs. There is no greater fear on Earth than to stand emotionally naked before the one you love most in life, fearing that person will laugh at your desires or refuse to give you what you desperately want.

A man who lists sexual fulfillment as one of his needs, and whose wife fulfills this need, makes his wife a continual source of intense pleasure, and his love for her grows stronger.

Charisma: Is there anything that women, in particular. can do?

Diana: Adultery does not occur overnight. The man usually begins by conversing with a close female friend, someone at the office or a neighbor.

The “conversation only” friendship then develops into a deeper relationship of trust and desire. One step at a time the marriage is compromised by deeper feelings of trust in and emotional dependence on the third party, and if he does not stop himself, adultery will result.

We women must ask ourselves these questions: What are my husband’s needs? What am I doing to meet his needs? What am I doing to create frustration in him? Have I communicated to him what my sexual desires and needs are?

Charisma: John, what have you done over the years to cultivate the spark in your marriage?

John: Diana and I have something between us we call . It’s an acronym for One Way Everyday. One way, every day, I seek to find a way to make Diana feel good about herself or to help her accomplish a task that is becoming overwhelming.

Last night we washed dishes together. Some days, it’s a rose from the rose garden. Other days, it’s a card. Other times, there is a date night. But one way, every day, there has to be the transmission of my effort to make that day a better day.

Charisma: Diana, you spend a lot of time in your part of the book talking about honesty and communication.

Diana: So many times we hear men tell us that we are so much more “emotional” about the events of our lives than they are. Because of that, it is sometimes easier for a wife to keep her emotions hidden from her husband.

But it will be difficult for your husband to give you the emotional support you want and need from him if you cannot openly express your emotions–positive and negative–to him.

Because you have not given him your emotional honesty, he will disappoint you by his lack of understanding the emotions you are feeling.

I used to hide my feelings from John. Well, that has changed!

I am so honest with what I need and want from him now that I write it on the bathroom mirror with lipstick! I leave notes in his briefcase and in the pages of his sermons! Notes are left on his office calendar: “Diana needs a date night–now!”

Satan is present to destroy the works of the Lord in His people. He wants to keep you from communicating honestly with your husband. If you are dishonest, you will be falling right into the evil one’s trap to rob, kill and destroy your marriage.

Charisma: You give some amazing testimonies about how various marriages have been repaired–including those that were torn apart by addiction and unfaithfulness. You even describe a couple who were about to divorce because the husband had a gay affair. Is reconciliation in such cases truly possible?

John: Let me tell you the story of Robert and Rachel. Robert was a very successful stockbroker. He had feminine characteristics, and he was homosexual. He came to the church and confessed that he wanted to make a change in his conduct and become a Christian. He began to serve and serve well in a number of ways in our church.

He met Rachel, who was far more successful in her business than Robert. Rachel was extremely intelligent, a type-A, turbo-charged woman who lived in a man’s world and was extremely successful. They met and were married within six months.

For the first year, life seemed to be a thing of beauty. And then the thing that I had feared from day one began to manifest itself. Robert told Rachel he was having an affair with a man.

Rachel came to my office shaken but committed to solving the problem. She said, “If it were another woman, I know how to fight that fight. But how do you fight a relationship with a man?” I had no intelligent answer.

I asked Robert and Rachel to come to my office together, and I asked Robert the question I have asked everyone in the first five minutes of the first counseling session: “Do you want to save your marriage?”

Robert said yes, and we began to work toward removing the roots in his past life that would bring him to reconciliation with God and Rachel. What we did and said and experienced is in and of itself worthy of a book, but the point of this story is to say that, years later, Robert and Rachel are living together in divine harmony with their children without another homosexual manifestation. Yes … a marriage can survive even homosexuality.

Charisma: How important is it for couples to pray together?

John: A man and a woman talking to God, bound together in prayer, is an unbreakable union.

Diana: My husband and I have prayed together for almost 30 years. When we pray together, we get answers from heaven. And it is simply not possible to be angry with each other when you pray.

I tell couples to make a prayer list and to find a private time and place for prayer. John and I like to have our prayer time while we walk. We are away from intrusions and able to call on the Lord in freedom.

First, we come into a time of repentance, asking forgiveness for anything we have said, done or thought that has grieved the Holy Spirit.

Our list then begins: We pray for our children by name, their spouses and our grandchildren. We pray for the protection, direction and prosperity of our church, TV outreach, and school and for everyone associated with them.

Then we submit any personal petitions we may have. Finally, we pray for the peace of Jerusalem and end in a time of praise for our Lord and His blessings.

Learn to pray in agreement, not in competition. There is a sweet sound in heaven when a husband and wife are in harmony before God.

The more this divine communication occurs, the more you will want to talk to each other about other things. You will find that the “things” you speak about will not include gossip or tale bearing. Your conversation will concentrate on your petitions and the testimonies associated with those prayers.

You will share the dreams and aspirations each of you has as you come into agreement. Your children will know that when Mom and Dad pray, things happen.

This teaching is far greater than any book or class you will ever enroll them in. Without communication, your marriage will become dry and wither, just like the soul when it has no time with God.

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“Friends with benefits” flies in the face of the faith conviction that sex is reserved for marriage.
Sherry attends a Christian college. I asked her how her sophomore year was going. She hesitated. What followed shocked Sherry’s mom because she was totally unaware of an unconventional dating trend often found on college campuses.

It’s called “friends with benefits,” also known as “bed-buddy arrangements” or “hook-up buddies.” And although Sherry had the sense and spiritual conviction to resist engaging in this supposedly uncomplicated sexual arrangement, a few of her friends were picking up the practice.

Friends with benefits (FWB) involves having friends with whom you can have sex or engage in sexual activity. The relationship is not “official” in terms of dating or going steady. Instead, it is an arrangement made between two people to engage in sexual activity anytime the two of them decide to do so.

Teens and young adults who advocate this behavior believe this is a way to fulfill their sexual needs without putting the time and attention into a formal relationship. You hook up, have sex and get on with life.

With the pressure of college acceptance, preparing for the future and living in a sexually saturated society, FWB is convenience-store sex enjoyed in an amoral context. The assumption is that sex happens, so you might as well take control and have it with people who are friends but who require nothing more from you. At least that is the theory.

Engaging in sex outside of marriage is hardly new behavior, but the change in attitude toward conventional dating rules should concern you. FWB is another attempt to debunk the faith conviction that sex is reserved for marriage.

The media play a part in developing the attitudes of teens toward sexuality. A recent study found that the more exposure to media sex teens have, the more likely they are to engage in sexual behavior. And with more teens regularly exposed to Internet pornography, sexual attitudes are being influenced in ways that reduce sexual partners to mere objects of gratification.

The Internet has changed the way people meet and date each other. Though many casual sexual relationships happen spontaneously at parties and events, popular teen Internet sites such as or provide new ways for teens to meet people and hook up online. You could potentially find a bed buddy online in your local area without having to choose someone from your school. That way, you could have sex without meeting that person in the hall at school the next day.

But how well does FWB work? When you talk to kids, not well at all. Friendships are lost. Rejection is felt. Sexual purity vanishes in a meaningless context. Emotional upheaval results. Deep scars are created.

Therapists–myself included–will tell you FWB will never work, no matter how much one tries to revolutionize dating. Emotional fallout is always present. To believe otherwise is foolish. But the spiritual and moral fallout is even greater.

The truth is that FWBs aren’t really friends. They are simply deceived people giving in to lust. James talks about this when he says: “Each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death” (James 1:14-15, NKJV).

There is good reason to follow God’s way of doing things. It prevents us from destroying our lives and perverting God’s design. Casual sex never works because sex wasn’t designed to be enjoyed in a casual context. You can’t redefine truth. Rationales for sex outside of marriage are based on lies.

With FWB, you lose more than a friend. You give away a precious and beautiful part of yourself for a moment of pleasure.

If you think FWB is harmless and hurts no one, you are wrong. If you’ve engaged in this practice, there is healing. And if you really want a friend with benefits, let me point you to a true friend, Christ. He doesn’t take what is sacred from you; He gives His holiness to you. You lose nothing and gain everything.

Heaven has invaded earth in Redding, California, where a sense of revival has been stirring Bethel Assembly for 10 years.
The desire for more of God runs deep in Bill Johnson’s life. So deep that the veteran pastor has dedicated his life to fulfilling his personal convictions about the role a single church can play in reaching the world for Jesus.

“We believe it’s possible for a church to change the world–to alter the course of history,” Johnson states. “We live with that agenda.”

The “agenda” he speaks of is more than a mere planning statement written on paper or a carefully worded creed spoken with emphasis on Sunday mornings. It is, for his congregation of some 1,500 members–the Bethel Assembly of God in Redding, California–an effort to win, and keep on winning, people to God.

“We think in terms of a 100-year vision, in terms of sowing into a generation we’ll never see,” Johnson told Charisma. “[Christianity] throughout its 2,000-year history has never had an increase from one generation to the next, as it pertains to revival. That’s got to change.”

To help bring about that change, Bethel–in Northern California about two hours from Sacramento–has transformed itself into what is increasingly being referred to today as an “apostolic resource center.”

Whether the church’s presence is felt in the sanctuary on Sunday or at the mall Monday, all its ministries are designed to bring reformation–to equip believers from across the nation to carry God’s presence and power into their personal spheres of influence, and into the world.

The services, Sunday school activities and School of Supernatural Ministry all reflect a commitment to teach the upcoming generation how to receive an inheritance and how to build on the work of the Holy Spirit.

Johnson, in addition to his senior pastor duties, presides over a national network dedicated to global revival. He has written two books that reflect his passion for revival–When Heaven Invades Earth: A Practical Guide to a Life of Miracles and The Supernatural Power of the Transformed Mind–and is frequently asked to speak at conferences.

His growing national reputation is that of a gifted leader known for dispensing fatherly counsel to leaders who want to sustain the presence of God and extend His kingdom into the world through young and old alike.

‘Training for Reigning’

To visitors attending one of Bethel’s two Sunday morning services, the intergenerational influence is displayed clearly. Dozens of young adults line the side walls, and more drift to the front of the platform where they mingle with older adults and young children, their faces lifted in worship.

One young man, almost hidden behind the edge of the platform, worships through his ballet dance, conveying a sense of grace. At the front of the sanctuary, a middle-aged man waves an exquisite flag of silk painted with the face of a lion in symbolic representation of God’s strength.

A small child imitates the tall young man beside him who is leaping to the worship music. The youngster reveals a glimpse of the possibility of seeing God’s dreams lived out more fully in a subsequent generation.

An old woman stands between two young women, their eyes closed and their hands raised in worship, the expressions on their faces the same–a testimony to how the love of God spans the ages and stages of life.

The evening service is altogether different. The intimacy of God’s presence is almost tangible, and artists paint prophetically alongside the worship band. The atmosphere is charged with anticipation yet tempered by the assurance that God is present.

The place is full of young adults from the School of Supernatural Ministry. They are passionate about their encounters with Jesus, who, they testify, changes them, heals them, reveals their destiny and empowers their purpose.

According to Kris Vallotton, the school’s overseer, the students are “in training for reigning”–and it is intensive.

First-year student Ben Kline, from the Vineyard Christian Fellowship of Hood River, Oregon, explains: “I’ve received one revelation after another, and I can’t really process it all at one time. I have to trust that my spirit catches it and that it will catch up with my head some other time.”

Students in their first year receive much in the way of emotional healing and training in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The other students find themselves launching ministries or going on international outreaches characterized by demonstrations of God’s healing power, where brushes with martyrdom become a distinct possibility.

One young woman, Vallotton says, witnessed a bus accident while overseas, stepped out of her vehicle and prayed for a man who instantly came back to life. Another young man from the school was held at gunpoint while in Peru. His response to the gunman was, “I have come here to die.”

The small Hood River church has sent five young adults to attend the school this year, and their pastor, Denny Anderson, says the transformation in their lives is already evident.

“I have seen our young people challenged in every area of their personal lives,” he says. “Those who have returned from previous schools have taken places of service in our church. They walk in a deeper level of maturity and understanding of the times in which we live.”

Nathan Armerding, 20, attended the Bethel school last year. He is now involved in ministry at his home church in Oregon. He says the preparation he received stressed in part that ministry goes well beyond a local church’s limitations.

“God could be calling you to the business world or to be a doctor,” he points out. “Wherever your area of influence is, He wants you to release the kingdom of God, and you need to be able to be free to do that.”

The Domino Effect

For Bethel the primary sphere of influence is Redding, where church members work actively to spread the kingdom of God. The city is their first ministry priority.

“God gave us a clear word that once one city falls there will be a domino effect across the nation,” Johnson told Charisma.

Strategy-filled sermons motivate staff and church members to release God’s love and presence into Redding schools and businesses until the whole city falls into the lap of their heavenly Father.

“It has to happen somewhere first,” Johnson maintains. “We just need to do our part to see that it happens here.

“We work to destroy the concept of ‘us and them’,” he adds, explaining that “everyone in the community is either Christian or pre-Christian. We’re here to be a blessing to the city, and we believe that the kindness of God leads to repentance. We live out of a sense of obligation that we owe them a divine encounter.”

As a result, Bethel members shopping at the local malls and drinking coffee in the local Starbucks are willing to boldly talk with strangers–offering them healing prayer and revelatory words, releasing the power of God to save.

Hundreds of people have been healed in public places–rather than just within the confines of the church building. Many physical healings have occurred in the local mall because people from Bethel reach out to others while shopping.

“Our ambition is to take that atmosphere of heaven wherever we go, whether it’s into our homes, businesses, the streets, the mall–to take the reality of the abiding presence of God,” Johnson says. “You’ve got to function in power because that is the normal Christian life.”

Fuel for Revival

Becoming better acquainted with God’s power as the basis for normal Christian living has been a process for Johnson. He and his wife, Brenda, or “Beni,” started out in ministry as singles pastors under his father’s leadership at Bethel Church until they were sent to pastor a church in Weaverville.

A deeper transformation in his Christian life occurred when his Weaverville church experienced a visitation from God after Johnson attended a 1987 conference led by John Wimber, founder of the Vineyard church movement.

“A number of healings and manifestations broke out and I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t object to it, I wasn’t opposed to it; I just didn’t know how to pastor it in a way that it would continue and increase,” Johnson told Charisma.

Eventually, this experience led him to a crossroads. He had to decide which direction to take his church.

“In 1995 in Toronto I said, ‘Lord, if You touch me again I will never change the subject.’ So I went up for prayer every time it was offered. I didn’t have anything dramatic happen, but I came home and said, ‘I am going to give the rest of my life to this.'”

In February 1996, after 17 years of leading the Weaverville church, the Johnsons were invited to become senior pastors of Bethel. Their three children are also staff ministers in local churches, either in Weaverville or at Bethel.

Today Johnson describes Bethel as a church where “everything we do either fuels revival or is fueled by revival.”

That includes a concurrent focus on prayer and intercession through the ministry of Beni Johnson, as well as the addition of a separate 24-hour house of prayer called the Alabaster House.

“Out of intimacy [with God] intercession was birthed,” Beni explains. “You find that place of intimacy and life flows out.”

A gifted teacher in her own right, Beni also leads groups of intercessors to places in the city to pray over businesses for prosperity and breakthrough. The result is an evident economic increase in areas of the city they prayed over–areas that once were in decline.

An atmosphere of intimacy with God and honor for one another permeates the church. At times, God moves so dramatically through healings and heavenly phenomena that Bill stands transfixed.

One dramatic healing occurred last October. After several surgeries to correct disk injuries to her spine, Cheryl Haase, 60, was labeled by one doctor as “the worst pain case in the county.” Doctors could do nothing for her but insert a pump into her stomach that would administer pain medication directly to the spine and neck immobilized by two rods.

Haase eventually discovered that she was dying. Her body could no longer tolerate the pain or the medication. She heard that Bethel would be hosting revivalist Randy Clark’s healing school and asked her husband to take her.

“This time I came into the church in a wheelchair and I came out of it walking,” Haase told Charisma. “I felt the heat go down my spine and I walked the whole room. It stopped the whole conference.”

Bethel also has experienced some strange phenomena, including moments when feathers have fallen in the sanctuary and elsewhere. One feather landed in the car of a family who was moving to Redding. They had it analyzed by an ornithologist, who determined it likely came from the breast of a dove.

Gusts of wind have blown through the services when doors were closed. People in the prayer house have heard angels singing or cheering. Children have seen gold dust appear on their hands.

One man discovered a small chunk of gold on his cheek. When he had it analyzed, it was determined to be a pure form of gold with an unknown oil in it.

“These phenomena are evidences that His world is breaking into ours,” Johnson explains. “The open heaven is the inheritance of the believer.”

Leading With Relationships

Johnson’s views about “the open heaven” and sustaining “a culture of revival” draw many leaders who want to become affiliated with his ministry. “We have people constantly wanting to relate to us and asking for our covering. We say, ‘Relationships take time,'” Johnson says.

Randy Clark, who is credited with sparking the Toronto Blessing revival of the 1990s, recently brought his Apostolic Network of Global Awakening–churches that partner with him for international revival–under Johnson’s leadership.

“I believe that Bill Johnson will be known as the most significant teacher in church history in the next 25 years,” Clark told Charisma. “Bill carries the message of John Wimber to its logical conclusion.”

Anderson of Hood River Vineyard agrees. “I believe that Bill carries the same message to the church that John Wimber did,” he says. “It is a call to a reformation of our church culture and to the way we think about the King and His kingdom.

“We have seen dramatic increases in salvations, healings and the manifest presence of God in our midst,” he adds. “Our fellowship has grasped, with increasing vigor, the passion to minister in the community. Our entire church culture is in the process of being reformed.”

To assist others in keeping a move of God sustainable, Bethel offers ministry resources designed to strengthen personal gifts and callings. There is a school of business for supernatural marketplace ministry and a Strategic Planning workshop that is offered six times a year.

The staff also hosts leadership training in May and November. Most who attend receive a great deal of personal and prophetic ministry, and testimonies of physical healing are common.

Participants in Bethel workshops and conferences ultimately discover the secret behind the church’s success and favor within the community.

“It’s tremendous for others to see the honor our staff has for one another–we live in a culture of honor,” Johnson explains. “What makes it work is that we are not afraid to confront sin. And we work hard to call out people’s destinies.”

A preferential honoring of one another, based on Romans 12:10, leads staff members to defer to others’ gifts and develops a relational structure that creates comrades rather than competitors.

This practice extends to Redding, where Bethel’s financial resources are shared routinely with other churches to help ensure their success. On behalf of the church, a monthly gift is given to the local Native American tribe to honor them as the original owners of the land.

“We literally give ourselves away that others are blessed,” Johnson says. “We cannot come into all that God has for us if our brothers and sisters are not equally blessed.”

Some people may not like her forceful preaching style. But one thing is for sure: When Paula White found Jesus, her life was transformed
Rising tall and slender from her seat, Paula White walks to the platform with confidence. With a big Bible clutched tightly in her hand like a special-delivery package, she grabs the microphone and sets the stage for a Holy Ghost rally.

“How many of you know God’s about to reverse the curse in your life?” she asks, her voice booming out to the nearly 6,000 churchgoers attending Super Sunday. “Slap somebody upside the head and say, ‘Reverse the curse!'”

Radical praise erupts from one side of Bishop T.D. Jakes’ cavernous Potter’s House church in Dallas to the other. The 38-year-old woman who has primed this crowd and hundreds more like it is a feisty, charismatic preacher. White has managed to overthrow barriers common to her female contemporaries and become one of the most sought-after preachers–male or female.

“When pastor Paula White shares who she is, where she’s been and how the Lord brought her through, she encourages her audiences to hope for change,” Jakes told Charisma.

White has crisscrossed diverse lines to minister in the Church of God in Christ, the Greek Orthodox Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Church and prayed for accused singer Michael Jackson.

In 2001, she launched Paula White Ministries and signed on to broadcast her weekly TV show with secular network giant Black Entertainment Television. A popular author, White has written several books including He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not (Charisma House).

Clad in a black suit and stilettos that make her look taller than she is, the 5-foot 5-inch preacher struts across the stage to drive home another point in her sermon: “I don’t know who I’m here for, but somebody’s going to receive a divine reversal!”

“Preeeach, Paula! Preach!” the mostly African American congregants yell to the pretty Anglo woman who some describe as Barbie-like, with her trim figure, fashionable clothes and neat blond hairstyle.

For these mainly black worshipers who have flocked to hear White’s message, color seems to be a nonissue. They’ve come to receive a word from God, and it doesn’t matter to them if her skin is a different color from theirs. Her ability to connect with diverse audiences, say her supporters, is due primarily to her ability to keep it “real.”

Pastor Randy White knows why his wife is making significant strides in the church. “She is dedicated and committed to the study of the Word, to stay in His presence and to consecrate herself,” says White, who along with with his wife, founded Without Walls International Church (WWIC) in Tampa, Florida.

Though she has become practically a household name among Pentecostal Christians as a preacher of faith-and-victory messages, Paula White is no overnight success. She ministered for years to children and youth in inner cities.

Nor is she the product of a lineage of preachers who paved the way for her to become a well-known minister. She, in fact, didn’t hear the gospel for the first time until she was 18.

Charisma learned during a recent interview that there’s another side to the Paula White we see today.

For many years she struggled to overcome a childhood marred by suicide, sexual abuse, poverty and an ongoing dysfunctional family life. It was an upbringing that could have ruined her forever, but it instead prepared her for the ministry she is so passionate about today–reaching brokenhearted, abused and discarded people.

Tragedy Strikes

As a child growing up in Tupelo, Mississippi, White seemed to have a near-perfect life. Her well-to-do parents, Donald and Janelle Furr, were successful entrepreneurs who owned toy stores in the city. Her mother managed the day-to-day operations of the business, and White remembers tagging alongside her father when he’d handle business outside the office.

“Every morning my daddy would take me to breakfast. He would draw smiley faces on my pancakes, and we would go off to the country club and play golf or gin rummy,” White recalls.

But there was another side to the likeable, savvy businessman. He gambled and drank.

And before long, tragedy struck White’s idyllic childhood. One day in 1971, when her parents were separated, Donald arrived at Janelle and the kids’ home in a drunken stupor.

Grabbing for his daughter, he insisted to his wife: “Give me Paula or I’ll kill myself.”

“My father started bashing my mom in the head with his arm,” White remembers. Donald spent the night in jail, and after his release he later killed himself, White says.

It was hard for 5-year-old Paula to understand why the man she remembers today as a “big teddy bear, nurturer and caregiver” would kill himself. She found it equally hard to believe people when they told her she was the apple of her daddy’s eye. “For years I would say to myself, ‘If he loved me so much, why did he leave me?'”

This question sent White on a quest for unconditional love–and ultimately into the hands of a loving God. Because the tragedy left Janelle with the responsibility of raising her two children by herself, the family went headlong into poverty.

Not long after the suicide, White experienced tragedy of another sort. From the ages of 6 to 13 she was sexually molested. The abuse wasn’t “consistent or constant,” she says, but she told Charisma that trusted caregivers, teachers and even close relatives violated her during those seven years.

White is aware she isn’t alone. According to recent statistics, 3 million children in the United States are victimized every year by one or more sex offenders. In U.S. churches, the numbers are blurry because the abuse wasn’t confronted until the sex scandal in the Roman Catholic Church in recent years brought the problem to the national forefront.

That’s why White says she is grateful for the release of Jakes’ Woman, Thou Art Loosed: The Movie, which aired in 408 theaters around the country after its release in 2004. The film is a continuation of Jakes’ longtime message of the healing God offers for sexually and emotionally abused women.

A mother now herself, White has forgiven the sexual predators who preyed on her body during those abusive days. But she didn’t stop there. In an effort to prevent other children from experiencing the same fate, WWIC provides a safe haven for thousands of inner-city young people through its Operation Explosion Outreach Ministries.

Finding God’s Love

Like others scarred by alcoholism, suicide and abuse, the family reeled from the pain that had invaded their home. White acted as caregiver to her brother while their mom scraped to make ends meet, when she wasn’t dealing with problems, White remembers.

“Through it all, I always knew my mother loved me. Today, she is a born-again believer, my best friend and confidante,” White says.

The sexual and physical abuse that had crept into White’s life as a youngster began to manifest in ways she had no control over. She exemplified symptoms typical of molested children.

White became clingy, sucked a bottle and masturbated. One day a teacher sent a note home describing her as a “traumatized, troubled young girl.”

“My teacher stood me in a corner and spanked me in front of the class because I wet myself. She never discerned that something is wrong in this child’s life,” White says.

Not only did she have to struggle with abandonment issues stemming from her father’s death, she also had to contend with rejection from other children. But as a teenager, White was popular, pretty and sexually active.

In 10th grade her boyfriend, a member of the high school wrestling team, taught her how to control her weight through purging. As a result she suffered from bulimia for years afterward. Meanwhile her hunger for love became so deep that she lost her identity.

Says White: “I thought if [my father] left me because I was unlovable, then I would become what you think is ‘loveable.’ Is that a straight-A student? A pretty girl? Is that an athlete or someone who jumps in bed with you? What is it?”

While White was living with a boyfriend, God intruded on her life. “I went with a friend to someone’s house and when I walked in the door, out of the blue a man named Butch said, ‘I see your pain,'” she recounts.

White had done such a good job of masking the hurt, she thought it was impossible for a complete stranger to know anything about her. That day, however, she became a born-again Christian. The man also led her through steps of deliverance.

What she had spent the last 13 years searching for was found in one moment. White spent what seemed like hours at the house, she says, while the Holy Spirit transformed her life. She says God’s love consumed her.

“My guarded heart was pierced with the love that I had been on a journey looking for,” she says. “For the first time in my life, I knew love.”

Before White left her friend’s house that day in Baltimore, Butch told her to find a church to attend. Newly saved and eager to learn more about Jesus, she became absorbed in the Bible and visited numerous churches.

During a period when she attended a Nazarene church she noticed that her friend, who always seemed bubbly, would sneak away from the service on Sunday nights. When her friend told White she was leaving to get her “fix” at the small Pentecostal church, White asked if she could do the same.

“I went to that Pentecostal church and grabbed the back of the pew,” she recalls. “I’m thinking, Everybody’s crazy!”

She soon felt at ease when God spoke to her heart: “This is of Me and it’s OK. It’s OK.”

But it was the Word, not the church experience, that had the greatest impact on White. For the next two years, she saturated herself with the Bible. One day, she says, she was simply worshiping God when He instantly healed her of the bulimia she still was struggling with.

“From my feet to the tips of my fingers, I could feel God remove the bondages. He fully restored my metabolism,” she remembers.

A New Life Begins

White eventually found a church home in the city, and when the janitor at her church quit, her pastor–T.L. Lowery, of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee)–asked White to clean the church nursery. Lowery noticed her commitment to that job and asked her to teach the 2- and 3-year-olds, and later the 4- and 5-year-olds.

White says she must have studied 80 hours a week just to make sure her lesson plans were doctrinally correct and on a level the children could understand.

She was working at the Church of God headquarters in Baltimore when she met Randy, a divorcé, who was an associate pastor at a small church in the area. The two were married two years later against the advice of a few church members who said Paula wasn’t “ministry material.”

Randy, however, paid the comments no mind. The Whites now have been married for 15 years.

The couple moved to Washington, D.C., but left the city in 1990 after Randy sensed God telling him to move to Florida. It wasn’t long before the Whites rolled into inner-city Tampa in 1991 with a vision to reach out to hurting people.

Their strategy to win souls through evangelism and restoration paid off. The next year, South Tampa Christian Center opened. In 1997, the name was changed to Without Walls International Church to reflect the Whites’ vision of a church where people who would never cross the threshold of a traditional ministry could worship. Its catchy motto reflects its paradoxical purpose: “The Perfect Church for People Who Aren’t.”

Known today for its diversity, the church of some 15,000 members serves as a training ground for those seeking to spread evangelism and outreach throughout the country. The staff at WWIC have trained believers who represent more than 200 ministries in the United States and abroad.

In Luke 15:8-10 Jesus tells the parable of a woman who searched untiringly until she found a valuable silver coin she had lost. Like this woman, Paula White specializes in searching–for lost people for the kingdom of God.

While living in Baltimore, she would give food to homeless people and tell them about God. She would strike up conversations with strangers so she could share the gospel with them. That combination early in her Christian life of meeting physical needs and telling people about Jesus is what still drives her today.

Nothing stirs White more than her love for sinners. During her interview with Charisma, she cried three times as she shared her passion for unbelievers.

She will have the opportunity to reach even more people when her new TV studio, located at the church, opens later this month. Her TV program, Paula White Today, is seen by millions of people in the United States and is broadcast worldwide as well.

Although in her childhood she was traumatized by her father’s death and devastated by molestation, White never contemplated suicide. A vision she had when she was 18 reveals why.

“The Lord showed me … millions of people,” she says. “When I would open my mouth, masses and millions of people would get saved, delivered or healed. But when I shut my mouth, the people would fall into utter darkness.

“I knew then God was calling me to preach the gospel. My answer to Him was, ‘Yes, Lord.’ Today my answer remains the same.”

Can I Get A Witness?

Some people say Paula White can dissect Scripture like the scholarly Rev. Jackie McCullough, while others say she preaches similar to Bishop T.D. Jakes. One thing is certain, White’s preaching has opened doors for her to minister to a large following that continues to grow.

Her spiritual agenda has taken her to every continent on the globe to offer restoration to suffering people through evangelism. She accomplishes her goal with a simple message: “Heal hearts, touch lives and save souls.”

But White will tell you there’s no secret to her preaching. In fact, she credits Jakes, her “spiritual father,” with mentoring her in the presentation of the gospel.

“Bishop Jakes has had a great impact on my style and delivery,” says White, who has a copy of every sermon in Jakes’ library. McCullough, who is a doctoral candidate at Drew Theological Seminary, has also influenced White.

A Southern girl who in the past called herself “trailer park trash” now knows why her messages knock down barriers. “I’m called to be a reconciler, like David,” explains White, who says God is using her, like He did the ancient Hebrew king, to bridge two kingdoms. In her case, however, it’s the divide between races.

According to Ebony magazine, White is charting a course less traveled by others in Christian circles. “You know you’re on to something new and significant when the most popular woman preacher on the Black Entertainment Network is a white woman,” it reported.

For evangelist Joyce Rodgers, White’s ministry is essential to the church. “Pastor Paula delivers the Word with great passion that empowers anyone who hears her,” Rodgers observes.

In fact, White expects to receive more than 1,000 speaking invitations in 2005, which do not include the 120-plus offers for her to minister internationally, according to Jennifer Mallan, spokesperson for the church.

White does not wrestle with her ministry calling as a nationally known female evangelist. She has struggled, however, with the failures of her past. “I thought I wasn’t ministry material, but the Holy Spirit ripped off the labels,” White says.

Today, she is certain of her purpose. “If you cut me, I’ll bleed evangelism,” she said.

A new study claims that vitamin E can be harmful at certain dose levels.
Question: I’ve heard news reports that say high doses of vitamin E might be associated with an increase in death rates in people. Are the reports true, and should I stop taking E?

Answer: The study being cited is what is known as a “meta-analysis.” It is so named because data derived from previous studies is pooled together and studied to form a conclusion.

In this case, 19 existing studies were pooled. The researchers involved found that doses of vitamin E at or below 150 IU (International Units) per day tended to lower death rates and doses higher than 150 IU per day tended to raise them.

Many other researchers believe that a meta-analysis cannot provide scientific proof of anything. That’s because it is based on the data of other studies, each of which researched population groups differently and used differing methods to obtain facts.

For instance, some studies cited in this analysis used natural vitamin E, and others used synthetic vitamin E. Some involved people with cardiovascular disease; others involved people with cataracts. Some combined vitamin E with other vitamins; others used it alone. Because of the diverse characteristics and methodologies of all these studies, any analysis based on pooling of their data is considered scientifically imprecise.

Several other problems exist with this meta-analysis: The study populations it cited were made up of people who were chronically ill.

With sick people, very high doses of vitamin E (up to 2,000 IU per day in some of the studies) must be used with caution. And for people with serious diseases, a complete assessment needs to be made of medical history, current condition, use of medications and so forth.

The fact that high doses of vitamin E were associated with a slight increase in mortality in sick people provides no evidence that vitamin E is harmful to healthy people.

Perhaps the most profound flaw in the analysis is that in all the studies vitamin E was used in its isolated, “alpha-tocopherol” form. Vitamin E is actually a family of nutrients consisting of four tocopherols (alpha, beta, gamma and delta) and four tocotrienols (alpha, beta, gamma and delta). To simplify, just remember the “4 + 4 rule”–each side of the “nutrient family” has four “members.”

In its food form, vitamin E always exists as some combination of these eight elements. In most nutritional supplements, however, vitamin E (natural or synthetic) is almost always provided only as isolated alpha-tocopherol.

For optimal health benefits, the various forms of vitamin E need to be taken together. They work together as an antioxidant team.

Each form of vitamin E has its own role on the team. For instance, tocotrienols have been shown to reduce the level of harmful LDL cholesterol, leading to a lowered risk of heart disease. They also are able to clear atherosclerotic blockage in the carotid artery, greatly reducing the risk of stroke.

Tocotrienols also inhibit the growth of cancer cells. In addition, alpha-tocopherol and gamma-tocopherol have proved to be effective in inhibiting the growth specifically of prostate-cancer cells.

When taking vitamin E, it’s important to remember that it should always be provided as a complex–as alpha-tocopherol plus mixed tocopherols plus tocotrienols.

The authors of the meta-analysis acknowledge that isolated alpha-
tocopherol has been shown to displace other forms of vitamin E in the body. They offer this as a possible explanation of their negative findings on vitamin E. I agree with this explanation.

As a physician, I know that nutritional supplements can provide optimal health benefits only if they consist of nutrients in their most complete, natural and bio-available forms. The vitamin E in these pooled studies failed to meet that requirement.

God, for a reason, has put together a vitamin E family, each member working together to give you maximum protection against disease. The next time you pick up a bottle of vitamin E, look at the label and ask yourself if it is based on the 4 + 4 rule.

Bishop Keith Butler may campaign for a seat in the U.S. Senate during his state’s 2006 election
With hopes of riding the momentum built by “moral values” voters during the November presidential election, a prominent charismatic pastor is considering a run for U.S. Senate in 2006.

Bishop Keith Butler, pastor of one of Detroit’s largest churches, Word of Faith International Christian Center, announced Dec. 31 that he was launching an exploratory committee to see if he could drum up enough support for a campaign. A longtime Republican, Butler, 49, said at the center of his platform would be the protection of marriage, religious liberty and national security.

Butler, who won a seat on Detroit’s city council in 1989 and served a four-year term, said it would benefit the nation as a whole “to have a senator that protects life, that protects traditional family values and … understands also that it is important to take care of the poor.”

He said his ministry has helped feed and clothe thousands of people since it was founded in 1979.

If he were to run for Senate, and if he were to win, Butler would not be the first minister to hold a seat in Congress. New York pastor Floyd Flake served six terms in Congress, while Oklahoma Baptist minister J.C. Watts spent four terms in the House.

But a win would make Butler only the fifth African American ever elected to the Senate, and only the second black Republican. Still, Butler says his goal is not to make history.

“Should I run, I will not be running as a black Republican,” Butler said. “I will be running as a Republican who believes deeply in protecting the family in our society, securing America, keeping her safe, keeping American jobs. I will look to be a senator for all the people of Michigan and not just one segment of the population.”

He admits, however, that it would not hurt the Republican Party to have another minority senator in Congress.

“I think it will assist the Republican Party to have [Hispanic Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida] and Keith Butler in the United States Senate,” Butler said. “It will make it very difficult for the anti-God and the anti-life [forces] to keep those states blue that are blue. I think Keith Butler [could help] some blue states turn red.”

A native of Detroit, Butler was a liberal arts major at the University of Michigan, studying social sciences and minoring in political science. He worked at IBM and General Motors before he founded Word of Faith with his wife, Deborah, after attending RHEMA Bible Training Center. Today the church has more than 20,000 members and has planted 15 satellite churches across the United States, and in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Scotland and London. Butler also oversees some 950 ministers through his Word of Faith Ministerial Alliance.

Conservative observers believe Democratic Michigan incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow is vulnerable to being unseated in the upcoming election. Michigan has the highest unemployment rate of any state as a result of significant job losses in recent years.

Several names have been tossed around as possible Republican candidates in 2006. Among them are U.S. Rep. Candice Miller, a former Michigan secretary of state; Oakland County Sheriff Michael Broussard; and Domino’s Pizza CEO Dave Brandon.

But Butler, too, is seen as a strong contender. Incoming Michigan Republican National Committee chairman Chuck Yob told the Detroit News he believes Butler would make a strong candidate. “He’s conservative and formidable,” Yob told the News. “He’s not well-known statewide, but he’s a proven vote-getter in Detroit.”

Getting votes outside Detroit may be one of Butler’s biggest challenges, though observers say he could overcome that obstacle. “I suspect he’ll do the work if he elects to run,” said Michigan Republican National Committee spokesman Nate Bailey. “He’s a smart man, well spoken, a man of great principle, great faith. I think he would make a fine U.S. senator.”

Already anticipating that Butler will run, Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) President Lou Sheldon has pledged to give Butler the maximum campaign contribution both personally and through TVC’s political action committee, the Christian Voters Project.

Butler chaired a TVC effort to support the election of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court and in 1991 helped Sheldon launch the Coalition for the Restoration of the Black Family. Last year the two partnered again to lead a group of African American pastors in opposing same-sex marriage.

“He understands and has lived out in his life conservative biblical principles relevant to the family and marriage, in matters of debt, in matters of defense,” Sheldon said. “So on the moral and social and economic issues, he has made his position well known through the years. And he would be a clarion voice in the United States Senate to keep America on those principles that our Founding Fathers gave us.”

Though Butler has been a Republican since the early 1980s and worked to get African Americans to vote for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, observers believe he could get significant support from Michigan’s African American community.

Detroit pastor Marvin Winans, a longtime Democrat, said he plans to support Butler should he run. “We were teenagers together; we grew up here in Detroit,” Winans said. “And I know he is a man of integrity. I know he cares for people, and I think he would be a great addition, a sort of conscience, in the Senate.”

National Religious Broadcasters chairman Glenn Plummer, who is also president of the Christian Television Network in Detroit, said he believes African Americans’ loyalty to Democrats is weakening, especially among Christians. “I think there are a lot of people saying I used to vote Democratic because my mother did, grandparents did. Now people are seriously … reviewing their position on this.”

He added that Butler has earned the respect of many residents of Detroit, which is roughly 85 percent African American, and he is an independent thinker. Sheldon agreed.

“[Butler] is not in anyone’s pocket. He speaks his own mind and makes decisions based on his own convictions,” said Sheldon, adding that if Butler won 25 percent of Detroit’s black vote, he could win an election.

For now, Butler said his biggest challenge is raising the $18 million to $20 million he says it will take to run a campaign. Second only to his need for prayer support, Butler said getting campaign contributions is “absolutely critical. Early money decides whether you’re viable or not.”
Adrienne S. Gaines