Full text of Bible teacher Derek Prince’s sermon titled ‘Father God’ which was delivered and recorded in Cornwall, England, on July 29 1998. This teaching is a study on the fatherhood of God.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Derek Prince – Bible Teacher
We’re going to make our proclamation, which is taken from the first epistle of John chapter 3 verses 1, 2 and 3:
1 John 3:1-3: “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God, and we are! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.
Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” Amen.
So tonight I want to speak to you about knowing God as your Father. We’ve all got the language, starting with The Lord’s Prayer, and it’s all genuine, but do we have the experience or is it just religious words?
In John 14 verse 6, a very familiar passage to evangelicals and others like that, Jesus says these words: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
IF JESUS IS THE WAY, WHAT’S THE DESTINATION?
Now in that statement there are two main elements: the Way and the destination. What is the way? Jesus is the Way.
What is the destination? A lot of Christians have never even considered that. Jesus says, ‘No one comes to the Father except through Me.’
Jesus is the Way, but the Father is the destination. And I am aware through many years of experience and observation, that multitudes of Christians are on the way but they’ve never arrived at their destination. They have never come to know God personally as a Father.
So they continue on the way, they live good lives and they see a lot of blessings, but they’ve missed the real point of the coming of Jesus, which is to bring us to the Father.
Now I want to illustrate this from personal experience. I was rather dramatically saved in the middle of the night in an Army barrack room in World War II in the year 1941 in the dear sweet city or town of Scarborough in Yorkshire. I didn’t know anything about doctrinal salvation, I just had the experience.
But I discovered afterwards there were people who had the doctrine but didn’t have the experience. So if I had to choose, I’d rather have the experience than the doctrine. But, praise God, you can have both.
But don’t be content with the doctrine without the experience. And my life was dramatically and permanently revolutionized. And where are we now? We are in 1998 so that’s how many years? 57 years, I have walked with the Lord. I have never been a backslider.
Many times I have not been what I should be, but I have never turned my back on the Lord. and the Lord has blessed me and used me, and I have preached probably in about 50 nations.
But in 1997… I have to be careful, 1997? 1996. See, I have my right hand with me here. I lose track of time, I’ve lived long enough, that the past has become a sort of blur to me, it’s just there. I know I had just celebrated my 50th year in full-time ministry, and had a glorious celebration in our ministry. And then Ruth and I were on holiday in Hawaii, in a little rented apartment and we’d gone there to rest.
And it’s quite amazing how many times we go somewhere to rest and we don’t rest. It’s almost – we can almost say it’s a foregone conclusion we won’t rest.
And I ended up having surgery and so on, for all of which I bless God. But anyhow, there we were, prepared to rest, and each morning we sit up in bed and pray and worship and we also take communion together. And this morning we had prayed, we had worshiped, we were praying, and I was sitting in the bed and something very unexpected, very objective, very physical, began to happen to me. I found a power that was moving in my feet, then in my legs, and then up my body.
But at the same time, I was aware of what was like a long arm stretched out from somewhere over my right ear, trying to press down a black skullcap on top of my head. It was as if I was caught in a conflict between these two powers.
And Ruth told me later that my whole body was affected by this struggle. She said, ‘Your color changed to purple. It was totally objective, not something subjective.’
And for a little while I didn’t know what was going to happen, and then the power that was working in me, overpowered this arm that was trying to stretch out the black skullcap and force it on my head. And it was withdrawn and something happened, and immediately I knew God as my Father.
It became totally natural for me to say Father. Now I want you to know I had had the doctrinal knowledge for many years. In fact, I had even preached a series of three messages which are recorded on tape, about Knowing God as Father. I had all the theory. And it was true. It was correct. There was nothing incorrect or insincere.
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