Evangelist Pat Robertson began the June 2 episode of The 700 Club by publicly criticizing President Donald Trump’s threats to call in military troops against protesters in American cities. Robertson, a conservative who is generally supportive of Trump, said it is a time when we should show love toward grieving communities, not force.

“Is it a time for love, or is it a time for war?” Robertson said. “You know, there’s a purpose to everything under heaven, we read in the Bible, and there’s a time. And it seems like now is the time to say, ‘I understand your pain. I want to comfort you.’ I think it’s time we love each other.

“But the president took a different course. He said, ‘I am the president of law and order,’ and he issued a heads-up. He said I’m ready to send in military troops if the nation’s governors don’t act to quell the violence that has rocked American cities.’ Matter of fact, he spoke of them as being jerks. You just don’t do that, Mr. President. It isn’t cool.”

Robertson also questioned whether Trump actually had the authority to do what he said he would do.

“The question is, does the president have the authority to call in the troops?” Robertson asked. “… You’ve got to go all the way back to pre-Civil War days to find an ordinance to give him that authority.”

Full video of Robertson’s remarks is available on the CBN website. {eoa}

Mike Signorelli, lead pastor and founder of the New York-based V1 Church, posted a video Wednesday morning lamenting the death of George Floyd and calling for accountability within the church to stand up against racism.

“I’m outraged,” Signorelli says in the video. “I’m heartbroken. I’m angry. And I’m still in disbelief that I’m raising daughters in an America where they have to see the reality of this manifestation of racism. But I’m also posting this and trying to use like whatever little influence I have to actually send a message to the white leadership of America—every politician, parent, teacher, pastor and every leader of privilege in this country—because we’ve got to move past the memes. It’s a great start, because we all know that the new racism is actually the denial that racism still exists. But we’ve got to take it a step further, because actually, empathy without action reinforces the status quo.”

George Floyd, an African-American man, was killed by Minneapolis police officers during an arrest on Monday. Video of the arrest—which shows that an officer kneeled on Floyd’s neck for seven minutes despite Floyd being handcuffed and saying “I can’t breathe”—went viral during the week and prompted many activists and Christian leaders to call for justice.

Signorelli says we must use this moment to reflect on how we as a church have been culpable in racist systems—to “remove the plank that’s in our own eye and see that we’re contributing.”

“Here’s my action step that I want us all to take, because this is what I’m doing today,” Signorelli says. “I want us to reflect. I want us to look at our own leadership. I want us to ask the question, ‘Whose neck is underneath our knee politically?’ ‘Whose neck is underneath our knee systemically?’ ‘Whose neck is underneath our knee spiritually, mentally and emotionally?’ And how can we examine ourselves and not just stop at being outraged as we look at the video of a physical manifestation of racism, but not remove the plank that’s in our own eye and see that we’re contributing. It might be on a different level in a different way, but it’s still the same racism that needs to be eradicated in our heart and our soul and in our spirit. And so, no, this isn’t a call-out; this is a call-up. Let’s take it to the next level. Let’s try to do more than just post a meme this time. Let’s self-reflect.”

Watch the full video here.

Mike Signorelli, lead pastor and founder of V1 Church in New York, says past success in ministry can become the biggest barrier to future success. Instead, he says, it’s vital that we forget not only our mistakes but our prior successes as well.

“So we talk about failure all the time, but actually your past success in ministry can be the biggest barrier to future success,” Signorelli says. “Because you could say, ‘Well, it kind of worked for me, so I’m going to keep doing it like this,’ you know what I mean? And you don’t find another way. So your biggest deterrent to future success can be past successes. That’s why when Paul said ‘I forget,’ he wasn’t just talking about forgetting the beatings. This is the duality to this message. It’s much deeper, because I’m going to unpack it as we go. He was saying, ‘I also forget the success.’ I also forget the success because there’s tens of thousands more people. So I can’t rest on my laurels like I won the Super Bowl. The new season starts and it’s Monday. Yesterday’s win is not today’s win. So when you’re in ministry, and someone says forget the past, you’re like, ‘Oh yeah, I get it, the failures.’ But I’m asking you to forget the successes too.”

Watch the full video clip here.

V1 Worship released a cover of the hit worship song “Raise a Hallelujah,” but the music video features a twist: Everyone is performing their portion of the song from their own home. The result is both a great song and a beautiful testament to the body of Christ’s ability to worship together—even from far away.

Watch the full video here.

One day can change everything for a local church.

On Feb. 24, 2018, Tom and Sarah Eccleshall drove to Heathrow International Airport to pick up Jeremy Edwardson and Andrew Jackson. Tom was the worship leader at King’s Cross Church (KXC), a charismatic church in London, England, and though Sarah, his wife, does not work at the church—she works for a humanitarian network—she frequently helps Tom with songwriting and worship.

KXC was about to produce its first-ever live worship album, and the church had recruited two of the top Christian worship producers to help them. Jeremy Edwardson—former lead singer for the Christian rock band The Myriad—had now shifted to working behind the scenes as an engineer and producer—and he stayed busy. Anyone who has ever listened to Bethel Music, Hillsong, Michael W. Smith, Switchfoot’s Jon Foreman or Brian & Jenn Johnson has probably heard Edwardson’s work. His friend and fellow passenger, Andrew Jackson, handled sound engineering and contributed music for artists like Matt Redman, John Mark McMillan, Jesus Culture, Kari Jobe, Kim Walker Smith, and Bryan and Katie Torwalt. Together, they were flying from Redding, California to London to help KXC record the album All Things New.

Up until the last minute before he had to catch his flight, Jackson was working on one of the songs for the album. He laid down a bass track, saved the finished demo, sent it in an email and then raced out the door to catch his flight on time.

Over 5,000 miles away, Tom and Sarah were waiting to pick them up after their flight.

“I remember Tom and I went to the airport, to meet Jeremy and Andrew in person,” Sarah Eccleshall says. “Of course, we were really excited to finally meet them. We were standing in the arrivals, just waiting for them to come out. They never arrived. We got this phone call from John, who was their friend traveling with them, that Andrew had gone into cardiac arrest, and he was rushed off to hospital.”

Jackson died within hours. He was 29 years old.

Sarah Eccleshall and KXC Pastor Pete Hughes spoke to Charisma about Jackson’s story, shared how it changed their faith and their church’s faith, and tackled one of the hardest questions facing charismatic Christians: If God can and does do miracles today, how should believers respond when He doesn’t?

The Silence of the Night

Hughes and his wife, Bee, planted KXC in February 2010, in a part of London which Hughes describes as being “historically … known for deprivation—the red-light district of London, if you like.” Around 2008, the area was redeveloped, and major technology companies like Google and Facebook moved in.

“So you’ve got this interesting context where you’ve got historic deprivation as well as an influx of wealth and business and retail,” Hughes says. “We’re ministering in an urban context where these different worlds are colliding, and we’re seeking to see God’s kingdom established right in the heart of that context.”

That fusion of worlds has led to an artistic spirit developing within the church. KXC has become a place of creative flourishing—and the talented musicians who call it home began to produce a number of original worship songs.

“We had all of these songs coming out of the church, and we really wanted to record them,” Eccleshall says. “We always say that the songs are the story and the soundtrack of the church. So we really wanted to get them out and hope that they will be a blessing beyond KXC.

“… There’s this really prominent building in Kings Cross, Scala, [which] has a very interesting history. It used to be a porn cinema at one point. It was this weird kind of ‘gorilla zoo’ at one point. A lot of really interesting things had happened in this building, and now it’s one of the most prominent gig venues in the area. When I first met Tom, now my husband, who is the worship leader at KXC, he said to me he always had this dream of playing worship music in Scala. At the time, we almost laughed it off just because it seemed so impossible. Again, it was this really popular gig venue in central London. The idea of having a worship event in there seemed almost impossible. But as these songs were coming together, a door actually opened up where Scala was willing to host this worship night, which felt like a miracle in itself.”

Hughes believed the idea of bringing 500 people together to proclaim the name of Jesus in a place like Scala was something worth recording. They began to work out the logistics, and Tom invited Edwardson and Jackson to record the album—though he didn’t think they would say yes.

“Tom had been a big fan of Jeremy’s and Andrew Jackson’s work,” Eccleshall says. “So he had heard some of the albums they had produced in the past. We sent them an email explaining what KXC was, sent them some of the music and asked if they would be interested in producing the album. Again, it felt like an impossible request. These guys are based in the States and obviously seemed really busy. So when they wrote back and said, ‘Yes, we’re interested in producing the album,’ we were so excited.”

Five days before the live recording was scheduled to take place, Edwardson and Jackson—accompanied by a friend—flew from Redding, California, to London, England. A few hours later, Tom called Hughes to relay the bad news: Andrew had gone into cardiac arrest on the plane. Hughes remembers the call vividly.

“I was ice skating with my kid at a church social,” Hughes says. “But none of us knew quite what was happening or the extent of it, so I rushed across London and spent the next few hours in the hospital—just praying for a miracle that Andrew’s life would be spared. We’d never met Jeremy or Andrew … in person. So I guess the first time we met Jeremy was in this hospital, gathering outside an operating theater, praying for a miracle.”

Eccleshall says the experience was—understandably—extremely painful for Edwardson. When the Eccleshalls eventually met up with him at the hospital, the meeting was far different than what they’d imagined.

“These guys were understandably completely in pieces,” Eccleshall says. “Andrew’s 29 and really healthy, so something like this seems crazy. Cardiac arrest at that age for a healthy guy? So we were waiting. We met them in the waiting room. And I remember just thinking, The only thing we can do is pray. And so that’s what we did. I remember praying, ‘We choose, God, in this moment, to have faith.’ When you’re in a situation with something potentially so horrible, you almost have to make a choice right away: How are you going to approach this? What are you going to do? We tried to just choose faith and press into that. We were there for a while. And eventually, the doctors came out.”

Hughes remembers where he was when doctors delivered the news to Edwardson.

“I remember being with Jeremy, one of the moments the surgeon came out, and I sort of moved back just to give Jeremy some space,” Hughes says. “So I was standing at maybe 5 to 10 meters’ distance. And I could see that this final update was essentially the surgeon saying, ‘We’ve done everything possible. You need to say goodbye.'”

Eccleshall says the group was in shock, but she thought of what she would want if she were in Jackson’s position.

“I travel quite a bit for work,” she says. “So I’ve spent quite a bit of time away from family in different countries. I remember thinking, If this was someone in my family, [if] I were an American based in the U.K., and I was experiencing this and my family wasn’t there with me, what I would really want is a family of faith to gather around me. And I remember just thinking, We have to go for it. We have to pray and have faith and try and, you know, do everything that we can, because his family isn’t here with him. So that’s what we did.”

Hughes told the surgeon that their group was from a local church and that—before saying goodbye—they wanted one final chance to gather around Jackson’s body and pray for a miracle. The surgeon allowed them to do so, and 10 people gathered in the operating room. The group was not only composed of KXC members; Hughes says a couple originally from Bethel Church had heard about what happened and came to join them, as well as another couple from Catch the Fire.

“[We] laid hands on him, praying in tongues, singing worship music—music that we found out later that he had produced himself—and singing over him,” Eccleshall says. “I remember looking over at the four heart surgeons in the room, who looked really uncomfortable with what was happening. But we didn’t care. We needed to go for it in that moment.”

As time passed and no miracle came, Hughes says the atmosphere of the room changed.

“You’re aware that you’re caught up in something tragic, but equally, as we’re praying, we became fully aware of the nearness of the presence of God,” Hughes says. “After like 10 to 15 minutes of praying for a miracle, I think we just knew that Andrew was actually departing to be with Jesus. And therefore, our prayers transitioned from, ‘Lord, bring Andrew back,’ to ‘Lord, we ask that you’d embrace Andrew now, and we commend his body into the hands of the Savior.’ … The only experience I’ve had that’s almost close to that was when our first child was born. You were just aware that, ‘Wow, this is like life coming into the world. This is a meeting point of heaven and earth. This feels like a holy and precious moment.’ And despite the tragedy of Andrew’s death, I think there’s something of that—this is a holy moment, because someone’s going to be with their Savior. There’s a deep sense of grief and shock and tragedy, but equally, I’ve not really known the nearness of God quite like it.”

At this point, Edwardson put the phone to Jackson’s ear and called Jackson’s parents to let them say goodbye to their son. (Eccleshall says the call was “one of the most difficult conversations I’ve ever overheard.”) After Jackson died, the group stopped at a café to get a drink and collect their thoughts. Hughes remembers that everyone sat in silence.

“I think there [are] moments where you can’t find the right words, and silence is a beautiful thing,” Hughes says. “So we just sat with each other, with God, knowing that God was with us. And every so often, someone would say something, and there’d be moments of laughter. And then there’d be tears, and then a bit more silence.”

At this point, Eccleshall says, the decision was made to cancel the worship night and let the American visitors travel back home to be with their family. Besides, the KXC group felt grieved and deflated; they were not exactly in the mood to worship. But when Hughes told Edwardson he could return to the U.S., Edwardson said he wanted to sleep on the decision. The next morning, at breakfast, he announced that he had “met with God that evening” and wanted to carry on with the live recording.

“He wanted to finish this for Andrew,” Eccleshall says. “We learned that he had had a friend pass away 10 years earlier, and he said he learned a lot from that experience. He didn’t grieve his friend properly. ‘And so,’ he said, ‘I really want to grieve Andrew properly. I want to do this right. I want to finish what Andrew had started.’ That was what was motivating him to finish this album. So we went back into planning mode, getting ready for this worship night.”

The Land of the Living

Hughes says many churches struggle to be places where people can authentically grieve, instead of feeling pressured to get over it or to repress their negative emotions.

“Often in the church, we’re not as good at actually acknowledging moments of pain and deep disappointment,” Hughes says. “But I think we need to develop a spirituality and a breadth of worship that enables us to celebrate all that’s good, but also all the brokenness that we experience in day-to-day life. … The church more recently has written songs that fall in a fairly narrow bandwidth, where we talk about the character and nature of God, which is amazing. But there aren’t as many songs of confession or songs of lament, of intercession, of the moments where life is really hard and we’re holding on to God but it’s difficult. So I think one of the things we need to do is develop songs that enable people to actually worship in those moments.

“I think it means, as pastors, developing environments where we can name moments that are hard in life. Vulnerability in our teaching is a great example—we don’t constantly present strength, but we recognize that there’s a beauty about celebrating weakness and recognizing that God’s power is made perfect in weakness. The more that pastors model that, the more those in the congregation realize, ‘It’s OK for me to be weak.’ … The more honesty there is, the more that a culture celebrates authenticity, I think the better we equip people to follow Jesus in the highs and lows of everyday life.”

As Hughes himself discovered only two months later—when his father-in-law died suddenly—grief is a slow journey that cannot be rushed. But God will patiently walk alongside you through the entire ordeal. And he says that reality is more important than any theological questions about why God heals some people but does not heal others.

“I think [grieving] people do raise big theological questions,” Hughes says. “But often behind the big theological questions isn’t ‘Please give me a simple answer.’ The real question underneath the theological question is ‘Can you be with me? Because I’m really hurting right now, and I need to know that God’s with me, and your presence often signifies the presence of God in this moment.’ I think there is a moment to speak in with theological truth about the now and the not yet of the kingdom of God. But we need to be with people when life hurts, and journey with them slowly.”

It’s a reality Eccleshall has also observed firsthand.

“My grandma was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis,” Eccleshall says. “So my early understanding of faith and prayer was praying for her healing. She was completely paralyzed from the neck down and lived a really painful, uncomfortable life. She was also an amazing woman of faith. As a child, my prayer every single day was, ‘God, heal Grandma.’ And He never did. Amazingly, though, I saw God step into her life in different ways. Because she was paralyzed, she had caregivers coming and taking care of her every day, and they saw her faith and her joy, and every single one of her caregivers actually ended up meeting Jesus through her, and so did their families. In some sense, I found it really frustrating and really heartbreaking that my grandma was never healed, because I believe the Lord could do that. But at the same time, I saw that the Lord was present.”

Eccleshall says embracing the messiness and uncertainty of faith is just part of following God on this side of eternity.

“For me, I guess faith is being able to hold on to these tensions,” she says. “Like, ‘Yes, I believe that God heals,’ and ‘Yes, I see that that doesn’t always happen.’ But I’m willing to hold on to both of those things. And it is a tension, and it’s messy, but that’s what faith is to me. It’s choosing to believe that God will heal, even though we haven’t always seen that. I think faith is a choice. There are good days and bad days, though. I have moments where I do feel really discouraged and ask God questions. … [When people] don’t see that healing, we need to give them the space to ask those questions and to struggle through those things. I think those pat answers of ‘Pray harder next time’ or ‘God can heal’ are not good enough. As a church, we really need to provide people with the space to wrestle with those things. Faith is filled for me with so many different tensions, and that’s OK. I don’t have a faith that’s particularly black-and-white. It’s gray, and it’s sometimes complicated. And that’s all right, because life is, right?”

As the worship event drew closer, Hughes received news that Jackson’s parents had made a last-minute decision to fly to London and attend the event.

“Andrew had given himself to worshipping Jesus, but also recording songs that enable people—whether in congregational settings or in their car—to encounter Jesus,” Hughes says. “And essentially, they thought, Well, we want to be at the last project. This is what Andrew was giving himself to.”

At Scala that night, Hughes addressed the crowd honestly from the beginning, telling them: “A lot of these songs are just celebrating the goodness of God, and we want to do that because His character remains the same yesterday, today and forevermore. But equally, we want to recognize that we’re carrying a lot of disappointment. And what we really need to do in this moment is to bring that pain and disappointment to God as a gift, as an act of worship.”

“Worship is a choice,” Eccleshall says. “You don’t often get to choose what happens to you. You know, grief happens, and we don’t choose that. But we do have a choice when it comes to what we do with that grief. Do we curl up into a ball and hide away, or do we worship? One song became a bit of an anthem of the week for us. ‘With Me’—written by Rich and Lydia Dicas, who are part of our church—wrote it after their brother passed away.”

In fact, Hughes says, “With Me (David’s Song)” was the song Jackson recorded a bass track for immediately before his flight to London—making it the last song he ever worked on. The song’s lyrics declare the choice to worship in the middle of grief: “When sorrow has surrounded and I cannot understand, I reach out in the doubting and hold onto Your hand/ … I will dance in the land of the living/ I will shout and I’ll never stop singing/ You are good and Your love endures forever.”

“As we sang that song out in Scala, our hands in the air, I really felt like a sense of victory in that moment,” Eccleshall says. “It felt like the worst of the world had come at us. And you know, the worst of the world came against Jesus, but He rose again. And if it felt like we were kind of able to tap into that and declare, ‘Death is not the end.'”

Hughes remembers that during the final refrain of this song, he looked around the room and saw something incredible.

“I looked up onto the balcony, and Andrew’s mom and dad had been up there,” Hughes says. “Andrew’s mom had been lying down for most of the time. She was feeling exhausted from the flight. You know, she was still in shock and trauma. But for that final refrain, she stood to her feet, and with her hands in the air, she was singing and declaring the goodness of God in a moment of turmoil.

“And I just remember thinking, That’s a picture of true worship. Because whatever we’re going through, whatever our circumstances, she knows that God’s character is constant. That His love endures forever. And she’s celebrating the character and goodness of God right now. The circumstances didn’t change. She was still hurting and in deep, deep grief. But for me, it was a picture of beautiful worship. And I’ll honestly never ever forget it.“

Hughes challenges all believers to embody that spirit of true worship—in the midst of unimaginable hardship—in their everyday relationship with God and others.

“As a community, we’ve been learning what it looks like to celebrate life, but also just to slow down and to support one another when life is tough,” he says. “Because those moments of pain? They’re defining moments. They’re formative moments. And if we turn to Jesus in those moments, there’s an unbelievable opportunity to become like Him, as He begins to redeem our pain and use that pain for His glory.”

READ MORE: Watch a mini-documentary about the events detailed in this article, including interviews with Andrew Jackson’s parents and Jeremy Edwardson, at kxc.charismamag.com.

Taylor Berglund is the associate editor of Charisma magazine and host of several shows on the Charisma Podcast Network.

CHARISMA is the only magazine dedicated to reporting on what the Holy Spirit is doing in the lives of believers around the world. If you are thirsty for more of God’s presence and His Holy Spirit, subscribe to CHARISMA and join a family of believers that choose to live life in the Spirit. CLICK HERE for a special offer.

Pastor Michael Todd leads one of the fastest-growing churches in the country, but the vast majority of his audience isn’t coming to the church building. Todd, the 33-year old Pentecostal lead pastor of Transformation Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, says in any given week, his church gets roughly 5,000 people in the building—and more than 35,000 online. When fewer than 1 in 8 of your churchgoers actually go to your church, what does that mean for pastors? Long before coronavirus ever forced churches to shift services online, Todd believes the digital age changed what it means to be a pastor.

“The first thing you have to know is the internet has changed everything,” Todd says. “And [in some ways], the last thing it has touched is the church—because we want to keep our traditions. I really do believe the Great Commission to go into all the world and make disciples, but I don’t think we could have done that in health until now, with the internet. There’s no way I could be a good father and a good husband and all this other stuff, and now also go into the world and make disciples. Even if you’re [focusing] only on your house and your neighborhood, that’s still a huge undertaking. But I believe God’s given us the internet … for great good.”

But Todd says he has no illusions that his church’s success can be attributed to savvy marketing, great technological design or his own inspired preaching. In fact, he says his entire testimony served as a test of obedience: Was he willing to obey God even when it didn’t make sense or match his own life plans?

Todd chose to obey—and God blessed his ministry beyond his wildest expectations. He spoke to Charisma about his testimony, why the next generation has latched onto his approach to preaching the gospel and how pastoral responsibilities are shifting in the internet age.

Promotion and Favor

Todd never wanted to be a pastor. In fact, as a teenager, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to be a Christian. Though he grew up in a Christian home, he says he never had an authentic relationship with God until his late teenage years. Before then, he says he was primarily raised and discipled by BET and MTV. The church didn’t have answers for the problems he and his peers were going through.

“I messed up so much because I didn’t have an example,” Todd says. “The only rule we were given was, ‘Don’t have sex before you get married.’ Well, what happens when you’ve done that? What happens when the locker room introduced you to pornography? … The church has been so silent about that. In recent years, they’ve started talking about it, but even then, the church is so PG when our middle school locker rooms are R-rated and X-rated. … So what ends up happening is we’re trying to spend the rest of our lives undoing what was presented first.”

That feeling of being failed by the church as a teenager is part of why Todd says he’s so passionate about helping teenagers and young adults today. He says he wishes he’d had a relatable, young mentor like himself when he was struggling with his faith.

Instead, Todd says what drew him back into relationship with the Lord was his love of music. He had played drums since childhood, and the church worship team became his primary musical outlet. During high school, he began pursuing music full time and, after graduating, started his own production company and became a music producer. During that season, he flew around the country to events and studios to produce music for clients.

One of those gigs took him to Greenwood Christian Center (GCC) in his hometown of Tulsa in 2008. He knew the pastor there, who asked him to run sound for a conference. After he did a good job, the pastor asked him to keep running sound at the church. Later, the pastor noticed his musical talent and transitioned him to becoming the worship leader.

At this time, Todd was splitting his time between GCC and serving at his parents’ small church plant in the same city, called Spirit and Truth Praise and Worship Center. His involvement at his parents’ church began after his mother called him on the phone and informed him, “God told me you’re supposed to do something with the youth of this church.” Todd tried to politely refuse—even suggesting that maybe she had misheard God, who meant to use one of her other sons. After all, Todd had never preached or taught from the Bible. But his mom would not be swayed. The next week, Todd became the youth pastor of his parents’ church. There were only seven youth present: three of his brothers, three godbrothers and godsisters, and one other person. (The church itself had only 15 members.) Todd called the ministry “SO FLY,” an acronym for “Sold Out Free Life Youth.”

“I had never prepared a message or done anything like that,” Todd says. “But God told me four things before I walked in there. He said, ‘Be real. Tell on yourself. Don’t judge them. And love them first.’ And that was my instructional guide into ministry.”

Six months later, Todd says SO FLY had 150 young adults attending weekly. SO FLY had no flashy sound system or game systems. The youth group was 150 young people “literally in a room in a circle,” Todd says.

Today, he recognizes it was a spiritual phenomenon, but at the time, he says he didn’t take it that seriously. He didn’t even study or prepare message notes; he just showed up every week planning to share what was going on in his life, talk about the Bible and try to relate to the kids. He says he focused on the four tenets God taught him before his first night of SO FLY. That meant confessing his own sins to the group at times—including pornography addiction and emotional manipulation—and sharing how Jesus personally transformed him every day. He believes that raw, uncomfortable honesty is the real reason young people responded to him.

“I think people are drawn to authenticity,” Todd says. “We have a saying around here: ‘It’s not about perfection; it’s about progression.’ So that gives people license to mess up and be like, ‘It’s my bad. I messed up, but I’m going to get better.’ And I think hearing that from somebody who holds the office of a pastor—when most pastors [project perfection]—is just refreshing to people. … How many pastors or small group leaders actually confess what they’ve done—not in an ethereal story or in an ‘I know a guy’ story? That’s how the Bible tells us we overcome. Yes, it’s by the blood of the Lamb—that’s what God did and what Jesus did on the cross—but then by the words of our testimony. And I think that’s what’s missing today.”

Todd says he continued to lead SO FLY for another year, until about 250 young people were coming every week in 2010. During that time, Todd started to compare the work he was doing at GCC with the work he was doing at his parents’ church. He believed Bishop Gary McIntosh, GCC’s founding pastor, needed more pastoral help, while he thought his evangelistic, charismatic parents could use some structure—and then he realized the two churches should team up and become one. Though there was initial resistance, over the course of three months, both sides became open to it, and eventually Todd’s parents’ church merged into GCC. And when it did, SO FLY grew even bigger.

“It got up to about 900 young people in summer 2011,” he says. “We still had no real leadership team—it was just me, my new wife [Natalie] and my godsister. Then I preached a message on purity and cut the thing in half, to about 400 or 500 young people. For about three years, that’s where I learned. I had no budget. We had to raise a leadership team of 12. We did internships. I had to teach the young people how to give because we had no budget, and the church had just gone through a hard financial season.”

Todd served faithfully in the youth ministry, but his fruitfulness did not evade McIntosh’s eye. He met with Todd in 2013 and told him he wanted Todd to help him bring the SO FLY culture to the Sunday morning crowd. At 25, Todd was named the executive pastor of the church, and McIntosh mentored Todd in leadership, bringing him to all the board and financial meetings, letting him program services and design sermon series. Then McIntosh had a heart attack that sidelined him completely for eight months—and Todd was the only one at the church who knew how to do McIntosh’s job.

“For eight months, I preached four different sermons to different groups of people every week,” Todd says. “On Sunday morning, I was preaching to a mostly traditional Pentecostal church. On Sunday night, I was preaching to a bunch of youth who were just trying to explore God and see if they wanted to be saved. On Wednesday night, I was preaching to the people who wanted to go deep in God—so you had to bring some outlandish revelation. And then on Saturday, I was teaching at a leadership internship. I did it for eight months, and it about killed me.”

When the pastor returned, he started to take back some of his usual workload, and they split the sermon load 50/50. But soon Todd felt a sense of stagnation. He started to grow concerned that GCC lacked a vision for the future and wondered if God was calling him away from ministry and back into music producing. After all, he’d never intended to be a pastor long term. He went to meet with McIntosh and told him his season had come to an end. McIntosh disagreed.

“I don’t have the vision for the next season,” McIntosh told him. “I believe you do.”

Todd disagreed: “I literally told him verbatim, ‘I don’t think I could be a pastor to a church. I don’t even like people that much.'”

“I’ve seen you do it,” McIntosh said. “I’ve watched it over the past two years. You raised up a leadership team of 12 people who committed three years of their life to this and never got a dime. You taught the hardest demographic in church—which is young people—to give, and by the end of your time [at SO FLY], the youth were giving $9,000 to $10,000 a month. We were able to hire a youth coordinator off of what they were giving.”

As McIntosh chronicled all of Todd’s achievements, Todd realized God had been training and equipping him for years to serve as Transformation Church’s next pastor. He was still hesitant, but when McIntosh told him it would be a five-year leadership transition, Todd agreed. He thought, That will give me time to go to seminary or college and to learn some more stuff.

Shortly after that, in September 2014, McIntosh announced to the congregation that Todd would assume the lead pastor position in one year. Todd was flabbergasted. But that didn’t actually happen. Instead, Todd became the lead pastor on Feb. 1, 2015. It wasn’t the transition he’d imagined or planned. But Todd says God was in it.

“All I can tell you is that there was a supernatural grace that came over my life,” Todd says. “God put me in rooms and in relationships with the right people who could give me what I needed when I needed it. We’ve just been faithful in stewarding Transformation Church. When I took over, we started in a converted grocery store with 350 people and a very small budget. Since then, God has expanded our influence to be able to help a lot of people see transformation in Christ. So we’re just grateful, and we’re super humbled.”

For the rest of this story, read the June-July issue of Charisma magazine.

READ MORE: To watch the original sermon that made Todd go viral, visit michaeltodd.charismamag.com.

Taylor Berglund is the associate editor of Charisma magazine and host of several shows on the Charisma Podcast Network.

CHARISMA is the only magazine dedicated to reporting on what the Holy Spirit is doing in the lives of believers around the world. If you are thirsty for more of God’s presence and His Holy Spirit, subscribe to CHARISMA and join a family of believers that choose to live life in the Spirit. CLICK HERE for a special offer.

Pastors Brady Boyd and Mike Signorelli say that when God becomes present in our rest, He becomes even more present in our work. In a video posted by Signorelli, Boyd explains that God has important work for us to do, but that we also must rest—and that’s not a bad thing or a sign of laziness.

“When God is present in our rest, He actually becomes more present in our work,” Boyd says. “Go to a lonely place, disconnect, quiet your soul, invite the rest of the Holy Spirit. And what’s going to happen is when you show back up at work after that season, there’s going to be a power in your life to heal the sick. I believe God wants to bring healing to your city, and He’s going to do it through the people of God. You know, the only formula God has to do His work on the earth is through human beings. And there’s a rhythm of living that allows us to be powerfully present in our work, and it starts with us choosing to rest and embracing rest as a gift from the Lord.”

In response, Signorelli adds, “I think too often in the church, the way that we teach is almost reward-based. Like ‘Man if I work so hard, maybe the Lord will reward with…’ But I think that it reveals such a significant faith in God to simply say, ‘My rest is also putting my faith in you on display.'”

Watch the full video here.

Mike Signorelli—lead pastor and founder of the New York-based V1 Church—says God will redeem the painful pasts of those who are currently mourning. In a YouTube video shared April 15, Signorelli shares a prophetic word for the year 2020.

“You have your nose pressed up against the painting, and when you open your eyes, it just looks like a mess,” Signorelli says in the video. “Your life looks like a mess. But He wants to change your perspective. What worship does is it causes you to pull your nose away from the masterpiece and to take a step back from the canvas so that you can see what He was doing the entire time. You don’t know how it’s going to work out. His ways are higher than your ways. His thoughts are higher than your thoughts. There is somebody in this moment right now who is reconciling their past. You’ve been grieving, mourning. You’ve been troubled by your past. You can’t make sense of it. It still looks like a mess to you. But the Lord is changing your perspective in this moment right now, and He’s beginning to pull your face away from the masterpiece that He’s calling your life. He’s going to redeem. … You’re coming into 2020 completely free.”

Watch the full video here.

Steve Quayle says his most recent book, Jesus: The Premise of the Promise, will likely be the last book he ever writes—but it is certainly his most important. Having written 12 books and produced five documentary films, he says the book—which provides practical insights and hope for God’s people during the last days—is the culmination in many ways of a “Joseph’s ministry” to the body of Christ, preparing them for the end times. Though he has never held a formal ministry office or been prophetically appointed, Quayle was mentored by many great Pentecostal leaders and has had the opportunity to spread the gospel through his work as a talk radio host.

“For a long time, prophecy was important to church, and then it kind of went away because churches thought that they had a better idea of organization and—in my opinion—compromise,” Quayle says. “Seeker-friendly churches were introduced into the churches across America at the expense of the Lord Jesus and true gospel. So in a realistic sense, I have been blessed to be able to go out on the highways and byways on talk radio, and I’ve been on for 25 years.”

Quayle says his goal is not religion but relationship—to help people everywhere fall in love with Jesus again and depend on him through a season of darkness.

“The passion I have is to see the Lord Jesus reestablished in the pulpits across America and the power of the Holy Spirit once again released in the fellowship of the believers,” Quayle says. “I believe that the greatest problems on earth are coming, and we’re now starting to experience them. Men’s hearts are literally failing them for fear of looking after those things coming upon the earth.”

Quayle spoke to Charisma Digital about his own testimony, the end times and what he hopes others will take away from Jesus: The Premise of the Promise.

A Visit From Jesus

Quayle says his own testimony of coming to faith in Jesus is filled with visions, miracles and redemption.

“The only way I could describe my walk is supernatural from the beginning, and I’m asking the Lord to make it supernatural in the end—that the blind might see, the lame might walk, and the gospel is preached, to literally bind up the brokenhearted because there is a lot of brokenhearted Christians who have been hurt,” Quayle says. “There’s a lot of brokenhearted Christians who have given up on God. And I want to make it clear: The coolest parable in the Bible to me is the Parable of the Prodigal Son. It’s the heart of the Father willing and waiting to receive anybody who comes back to Him.”

Quayle says he has felt that love firsthand. He was raised in a non-Christian environment and describes himself as a “hedonist” in college, where he became president of “one of the wildest fraternities on the Montana State University campus.” In 1972, he went to a Hal Lindsey crusade, where, Quayle says, Jesus revealed Himself to him.

“The Spirit of God touched my heart,” he says. “When he touched my heart, I gave my heart to Jesus. I went home—I was living with my mother probably 10 blocks away from the university—and then the Lord Jesus physically appeared to me. It was not in a dream or a vision. I fell at His feet as though dead. … When I was falling on my face before Him, He lifted me up, and I looked straight in His eyes, and He looked in my eyes, and every single cell in my body exploded with love and forgiveness. I felt the sense that I was in the presence of something I’d never experienced before.”

Quayle says that during that visitation, God imparted a prophetic glimpse of things to come to him, but “put a time lock” on the memory of that vision, only allowing him to remember those events as they came to pass. Quayle attributes his interest in prophecy and ability to accurately predict future events as a side effect of this impartation.

“I got baptized in the Holy Ghost in the presence of the Lord Himself,” he says. “Once the presence of the Lord left, I worshipped God probably for three hours, being baptized in the Holy Ghost, speaking a language I didn’t know. I didn’t know what had happened to me. Fortunately, I had a girlfriend at that time who said, ‘Go talk to this pastor at the [local] Assembly of God church, and he’ll tell you what happened.’ That was my introduction to the things of the Lord Jesus Christ.

“Over the years, I was trained and taught … and immediately got in the presence of some really well-known teachers at the time—Derek Prince, Don Basham, Bob Mumford, Charles Simpson, plus a lot of the early YWAM teachers, who Loren Cunningham had established. I had a great pastor by the name of Wayne Snyder—who actually was David Wilkerson’s pastor in Tyler, Texas—before Wayne passed away and prior to David’s passing away. So I had a heritage of some really powerful teaching in my life.”

An End-Times Message

Quayle believes the message of his new book is more important than ever, because believers are currently living in the last days. Quayle says he makes no apologies for his belief that the end times is already upon us.

“Men’s hearts are going to fail them for fear of looking upon those things coming upon the earth, and I want to make sure people understand,” Quayle says. “For example, we have a situation now with a plague. It’s my contention that the four horsemen have begun their walk across the Earth, soon to accelerate into a gallop. You’ve got plague. You’ve got war. You’ve got death. You’ve got pestilence.”

He continues: “I think we’re a country that is divided. I believe that we’re seeing the nation rise against nation, meaning ethnos against ethnos.”

Though Quayle acknowledges many have previously declared the closeness of Jesus’ Second Coming, he believes this time is different.

“Judging by the fruit of evil versus the fruit of righteousness, I believe America is under divine judgment,” he says. “There are people that disagree with me. Fine. But there’s more evidence—Matthew 24, Luke 21, the entire book of Revelation and all of the prophecies of the Old Testament—and all of these are now coming into play. All I hear [from critics] is, ‘Well, they’ve thought that for years.’ I say, ‘Yeah, but they were wrong for all those years because it wasn’t time yet.’ Now we’re in the fullness of time, where I believe what was written is going to be fulfilled.”

But as we enter the end times, Quayle wonders whether most Christians today are truly ready for the tribulations ahead. He says many nominal believers will probably fall away due to persecution pressures.

“We’re seeing the most anti-Christian fervor, which I believe will prove to be the worst in history, because I believe that Jesus said it would be that way,” Quayle says. “He said, ‘They hated me; they’ll hate you. They hated me without a cause.'”

In fact, Quayle says the spiritual battle playing out even today is the chief reason why Jesus came to Earth thousands of years ago.

“Jesus is the foundation of why there’s even a Christianity,” Quayle says. “Jesus is the foundation for the new creations we become. Jesus came to destroy the works of the evil one, [according to] 1 John 3:8. If you ask Christians why Jesus was manifest, they’ll say, ‘To save sinners.’ No, that’s not true. That was the outcome, but he Had to destroy the works of the devil.”

10 Helps for Today

Jesus: The Premise of the Promise is built around “10 Helps” or biblical truths meant to guide believers through the last days. Quayle says he received a prophetic download from God while he was in the shower regarding these helps.

“He gave me the helps of Scripture,” he says. “HELP is an acronym He gave me: The [first HELP] is His Ever-Lasting Preeminence. … [The others are] His Ever-Lasting Power, Presence, Protection, Provision, Patience, Purity, Proclamation, Peace and Promise.”

The last chapter switches out HELP for a different acronym: HOPE.

Quayle remembers praying, “Lord, what’s the acronym for hope? Because—and I’ve got to say this, Lord—with what’s coming on the Earth, a lot of people are going to basically lose hope. We know there’s going to be a great falling away. We know there’s going to be all sorts of events, as foretold in Matthew 24, Luke 21, the prophecies of Daniel and the book of Revelation. … God, give me an understanding of hope.”

He says he heard Jesus respond that HOPE stands for “His Overcoming Power Everyday.”

“Well, that hit me like a ton of bricks, because I had never seen or heard anybody else teach that,” Quayle says. “I think one of the things that’s really critical is that people need to understand manna has to be fresh every day. You can’t live on yesterday’s blessing. It can help you to proceed forward. But King David said, ‘Morning by morning, new mercies I see.’ I think it’s critical that people understand that, just as the Lord was prophesied to come into His temple then in the Old Testament, and [just as] Jesus fulfilled it in the New, God’s people need to recognize that their bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit.”

Quayle says the takeaway from the book should be how amazing Jesus’ words are in John 15:15: “I no longer call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master does. But I have called you friends, for everything that I have heard from My Father have I made known to you.”

“The ultimate desire of my heart is to get Christians to put the ‘wow’ back into the relationship with the Lord—to be amazed from the standpoint of ‘Look what he’s done,'” Quayle says. “Unfortunately, social media isolates people, and it doesn’t give them that touch or that human interaction. It gives them an electronic, digital, virtual world versus a real world. And I’m afraid that a lot of people in the digital virtual world will not be able to handle the real world. I think it’s been the ultimate hypnotic trance cast over not only the young generation, but even ours.”

Yet though the current situation seems dark, Quayle says there is always still reason to hope—and that we live not for this present Earth, but for the New Heaven and New Earth waiting on the other side of these last days.

“Bottom line: I believe when people read Jesus: The Premise of the Promise, it will give them a whole new love and appreciation for Jesus, and it will transform their lives,” he says. “I really do. … Without the revelation and the transformation of Jesus, I don’t believe it will be possible for the nominal Christians to stand in the days ahead. It’ll take surrender on our part, but also a supernatural move of God in our lives to bring us through what I believe is already upon us.

Taylor Berglund is the associate editor of Charisma magazine and host of several shows on the Charisma Podcast Network.

Pat Robertson made a simple decision to obey God more than six decades ago. As a result, hundreds of millions of people have been saved from sin and entered a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Robertson says he still remembers what the Lord told him years ago: “I am sending my Spirit all over the world. I want you to go out to the world. Don’t try to teach people theology—just tell them about Jesus. Tell them about the cross. Tell them about the resurrection. And if you do that, they’ll come to the Lord.”

Robertson founded the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) in 1961 and has seen the staggering fruit ever since. CBN now reaches 159 countries and territories in 70 languages, with an audience of hundreds of millions. Robertson says well over 100 million people receive salvation every year as a result of CBN’s multimedia efforts.

“It’s not reported in the news, but this is one of the great revivals in the history of mankind,” Robertson says.

He says this is just one of many miracles he has encountered over years of following the Lord. Robertson has been one of the most visible charismatic leaders over the last few decades, between hosting The 700 Club; founding Regent University, Operation Blessing and the American Center for Law and Justice; and running for president of the United States in 1988. Through all these experiences, Robertson says he has learned a number of key lessons, which he felt compelled to document for future generations in his new book, I Have Walked With the Living God (Charisma House).

“I’ve walked with the living God,” Robertson says. “I have [seen] miracle after miracle. I have been in difficult situations, and God has sent an answer. He has led me and guided me. I have started a number of significant enterprises—some of the most important in the nation, as a matter of fact—and it’s been the Holy Spirit of God that has led me all the way.”

In looking back on more than six decades of faithful ministry, Robertson shared with Charisma some of the greatest miracles he witnessed and lessons he learned, the many ways culture has changed throughout his lifetime and—when he’s eventually gone to be with the Lord—what he hopes people will best remember about him.

Eyewitness to Miracles

Robertson says he was first inspired to write the book during dinner with two friends.

“I began to relate [to them] some of the wonderful miracles that God has done over the years at CBN,” he says. “There’s so many remarkable things. My guest said, ‘Well, you ought to write a book about it,’ and I thought, Maybe I should. I found we have a timeline of things that had happened in my life, and I used that as a framework. Next thing you know, the Holy Spirit began to flow in my life, and it became a book to share all the miracles of starting CBN, starting Regent University, starting the American Center for Law and Justice and Operation Blessing, and all the things God has done over the years. So that was the origin of it.”

He hopes the book will be a reminder to believers everywhere that God is still a God of miracles—and they should act, live and pray accordingly.

“I would just encourage people to realize that the God of the Bible is real—and He does not disappoint people,” Robertson says. “He has never disappointed me. He does answer prayer.”

One example Robertson readily shares is the founding of CBN. The network—then airing on WYAH-TV—was founded Jan. 11, 1960, and went on the air in Portsmouth, Virginia, in October 1961. Robertson remembers first arriving in Virginia with only $70 in his pocket and no knowledge of television work. In fact, all he came with was the strong inclination that God had told him to buy a television station. After what Robertson calls “several extraordinary occurrences,” he found an owner willing to sell him a station, worked out a deal with RCA and says God even told him the exact amount to offer to buy the station.

Robertson says many people told him throughout this process to give up and admit defeat, but he would not let go of the dream God had given him.

“I’m a hardened optimist,” he says. “You know, the cup is either half full or half empty, and my cup is half full. I believe in looking at the positive, and I see God doing great things. … I was told constantly that I couldn’t do things or that this is impossible: ‘You can’t do it.’ ‘Nobody can do that.’ ‘You can’t get a license.’ ‘You don’t have enough money.’ ‘It’s impossible.’ Yet every time, the Lord said, ‘OK. Trust Me and I’ll do the impossible.’ … God is a God of miracles, and there’s nothing impossible with Him.”

Though Robertson says CBN was not the first television station to offer Christian programs, he notes that CBN was groundbreaking as the first station licensed by the FCC to broadcast 50% or more religious programs. For this reason, he played a massive part in creating the Christian media industry, which he says “didn’t exist at all” when CBN got started.

“I was able to pioneer all kinds of things in Christian television,” Robertson says. “Not only did we get a number of licenses, but I assisted people in various cities. I helped Rex Humbard in Cleveland, Ohio. I helped some friends in Pittsburgh. I helped other people get licenses and start stations as well.”

Robertson says the experience taught him to always trust God with his life, even when the road ahead seems uncertain. He says God can always be relied on to love and direct those who will obey Him.

“Don’t be afraid to take on big things,” he says. “God is a God of big things. He says, ‘Open your mouth wide, and I’ll fill it.’ So don’t be afraid of taking on tasks that seem impossible, because God is the God of the impossible.”

Lessons From Failure

But though Robertson loves to boast about God’s miracles and blessings, he says the experiences that have taught him the most were his failures. He admits that he has made plenty of gaffes and mistakes over his years in the public eye.

“I’ve tried to be painfully honest in this book …,” Robertson says. “This is my life—warts and all—and I think [it coexists with] triumph and breakthrough at the same time. I want to be honest. And I think that the readers understand that this is a book that honors God, and I hope it doesn’t honor me.”

With years of hindsight, Robertson says he can see how God has used even the failures to bring about blessings for the larger body of Christ.

“I’ve made some really bad decisions,” he says. “When I look back on them, I realize that, if I had succeeded, I wouldn’t be in a position to lead a university. I wouldn’t be in a position to write books. My income would be so substantial that I wouldn’t have to worry about things like this. So I think God deliberately wanted Me to be kept depending on Him on a day-to-day basis, instead of depending on the income from my portfolio.”

He says he hopes that because he hasn’t hidden his mistakes, other believers can look at his life and learn from his errors. After all, he says, that’s how he learned—by learning from the examples of both Christian mentors and biblical characters.

“I have learned more from the mistakes of other people and the mistakes of people in the biblical world than I learned out of their good points,” Robertson says. “You see, ‘Oh, he made a mistake here. Let’s not copy that.’ I’m reading a number of biographies, and I think to see the mistakes people make is more instructive to me than looking at all their good points. So if people look at my mistakes—and there are plenty of them—they can say, ‘God blessed him despite all of his failings.'”

He points to the life of David as a perfect example of this.

“David was a man after God’s own heart,” Robertson says. “He lived with the Lord, and yet he got his eye off of God. They say, ‘Idle hands are the devil’s workshop,’ and he was idle, and he let his eyes wander and, the next thing you know, he wound up in an adulterous affair, killing an important soldier of his and paying the price for it.

“At the same time, God brought him back, and he wrote in the Psalms: ‘Against Thee only have I sinned.’ He says in the Psalms: ‘Restore unto me the joy of Your salvation and take not Your Holy Spirit from me.'”

Robertson says he has also learned a lot from David’s predecessor, Saul.

“Look at Saul in the Bible, who became so proud,” Robertson says. “And when he did, he lost God. … You know, if pride is the greatest sin, then humility is the greatest virtue. It’s greater than love. I think the Lord wants to keep us humble. If I don’t submit to humility, God will make sure He gets somebody around me who will keep me humble. … I have to stay humble before God and realize everything I do is His. All the good things are His. I have one principle: All the good things, I give Him credit for; all the bad things, I take the blame for. If you do that, you’ve got it made.”

A Nation Divided

The last time Pat Robertson appeared on the cover of Charisma magazine, it was May 1986, and he was about to announce his intent to compete in the Republican primary for the 1988 U.S. presidential election. Though Robertson ultimately lost to eventual President George H.W. Bush, he made an impact on the race, with his long-shot campaign winning four states and a close second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses. He also spoke at the 1988 Republican National Convention that year.

Robertson says the political landscape has changed dramatically in the 32 years since his candidacy.

“When I ran for president, it was following Ronald Reagan, who had ‘Morning in America,'” he says. “There was a lot of hope with Reagan. He put in major tax cuts, and there was a comity between the Democrats and the Republicans. Things have changed so much over these last years. It’s just extraordinary. The rancor that’s now in Washington is so intense. There’s such a bitterness between the parties. [No one] is still trying to say, ‘We’re all Americans. We all want to make this country better.’ The whole thought is, How can I get an advantage over the other party and get my guys elected? It’s the politics of self-destruction.”

He believes if both parties continue along this path, America is in trouble.

“We’re torn apart in ways I have never seen in my life,” Robertson says. “There’s such hatred now between one group and another, and there’s this identity politics that’s going on: the black pride and the alt-right, the white people and the black people fighting each other. … I think the Bible makes it very clear: A house divided cannot stand. A kingdom divided cannot stand. And if we continue what we’re doing, this country ultimately is going to be torn apart, and we’ll all pray there isn’t some enemy lurking that we haven’t identified yet.”

Robertson says the answer to our natural division probably cannot be achieved by natural means. Instead, he believes it will take a supernatural revival to reform America.

“I think what we need more than anything is a powerful revival,” he says. “I have had on my program revival prayer—people have fasted and prayed for revival. I did a program called It’s Time to Pray, America. I was involved with John Jimenez as one of the program directors for something called Washington for Jesus, where we had a huge crowd on the National Mall that was up there doing nothing but praying. We were praying and crying out to God all day long for this nation. I think that only God is going to be able to send what is needed.”

He continues: “This country started out as a Christian nation. We identify as Christians. The Bible was our rule. So many people … have tried to take that away from us. We’ve had multiple Supreme Court decisions that have weakened our moral fiber, and the nation is suffering because of it.”

A Humble Legacy

Robertson doesn’t believe he has all the answers to our current cultural moment, but he is thankful that he continues to learn more every day. Turning 90 in March, he is already hard at work on his next book, which will be about the Holy Spirit, and says God is teaching him new things every day.

While working on this book, Robertson says, “I have had my prayer life quicken in ways I never dreamed possible. I asked the Lord if He would show me more about Himself. I want to find out more about God. That’s what I’m praying. I pray first of all, Make me part of Your plan. And the second is, Show me Yourself. Teach me about You. I want to know about You, God, and that’s what my prayer life is.

“I’m crying out to God, and the nice thing is, He’s answering. I’m beginning to see things I never saw in my life. I’ve studied the Bible for years. I’ve taught the Bible. But I’m receiving revelation from the Holy Spirit that’s beyond anything I’ve ever experienced. The Bible says, ‘They will still be bearing fruit in old age.’ As I creep up on 90, I find that there’s some fruit still coming forward, and I’m very glad to see it.”

Over the decades, Robertson has seen many other evangelists and ministries fall due to sin and scandal. He says he believes he has avoided similar ruin by remaining close to God at all times and never failing to spend time alone with Him. Every morning, Robertson spends time praying, reading the Bible and listening to hear God’s will for his life. He remarks that he “couldn’t stand” ever to go a full week or two without dedicated prayer—but it’s an easy temptation to fall for, especially with a busy schedule.

“The Bible says your enemy, the devil, roams the world like a roaring lion seeking whom he can devour,” Robertson says. “We have an enemy, and the enemy is trying to destroy us. I think [the key is] staying humble before the Lord. You’re not particularly vulnerable if you’re on your face before God. You only get vulnerable when you stand up and think you’re somebody special. That’s the thing that I always remind myself: I’m just God’s servant. By the grace of God, it’s His doing and not mine. … It’s when we begin to look at ourselves—’I have to hold on to my ministry, my kingdom, all of my things’—that we get in trouble.”

Robertson says he has thought about slowing down or retiring plenty of times in the past, even as early as before his first presidential campaign. But he says God keeps putting new missions and opportunities ahead of him.

“When I was 50, I figured I’d climbed up the mountain and, from then on, it was all downhill,” Robertson says. “But then between 50 and 60, I ran for president, so that kept me going pretty hard. Then when I got to 80, I decided it was time to retire and get off television and resign from the university. The next thing you know, … I had an explosion of spiritual life when I was 80 years old, and it’s like somebody strapped jet rockets to my back, and I took off with a huge amount of energy. I’ve done all kinds of things since that.”

When asked whether he has any plans to slow down, Robertson laughs: “Not any time soon, people!”

He continues: “I don’t know about retiring. In the Bible, they didn’t retire. The Lord took them up in a whirlwind or else they slept with their ancestors, but I don’t see anybody retiring. So I don’t quite know what retirement is, but it doesn’t look like it’s in the works for me for the next 10 years. That ain’t happening.”

One day, though, Robertson knows he’ll be with his Creator—whether that means dying naturally or being supernaturally taken away. When he does, he says he hopes people will not remember him so well as what God accomplished through him.

“I hope they’ll remember that I tried to show forth God’s power to my generation,” Robertson says. “CBN has led many, many people to the Lord. So all around the world, there’ll be churches building up on account of the people who found the Lord [through CBN]. At Regent University, I’m training leaders to teach others. Right now, our university has graduated about 10 or 11 college presidents, teachers in all kinds of schools and executives in various places. Our law school is very distinguished, and so I’m leaving a legacy of educational excellence. But more than anything, I hope that maybe this book, I Have Walked with the Living God, will be a testimony to people that God is real, and they can trust Him.”

In the end, Robertson says he wants his legacy to be simple: “That there was a man who didn’t have a whole lot, and God picked him up and let him do extraordinary things because of His power.” 

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: If you liked this story, you can read more about Pat Robertson and CBN at cbn.charismamag.com.

Taylor Berglund is the associate editor of Charisma magazine and host of several shows on the Charisma Podcast Network.

CHARISMA is the only magazine dedicated to reporting on what the Holy Spirit is doing in the lives of believers around the world. If you are thirsty for more of God’s presence and His Holy Spirit, subscribe to CHARISMA and join a family of believers that choose to live life in the Spirit. CLICK HERE for a special offer.