If you’re a mother at home, and you’re teaching little children, that’s the greatest job in the world you could ever do. They’re the next generation.  And we’ve got to have people out there filled with the Holy Spirit for the next generation.  We have to.  We just have to or the big revival will never come.

We stayed in Tulsa 9 weeks for that revival.  We stayed right here 9 weeks.  Oh – the man didn’t come that night to buy Oscar’s house.  At breakfast he said, “I don’t understand – the man didn’t come.  And I’m going to give him until 8 o’clock, then I’m not going to sell him the house.”

He looked over at Oral, and he said, “Oral, would you like to have this house?”  And Oral said, “Oh, I don’t know.”  He knew it was his house – God had told him it was his house, but he was a little nonchalant about it.  With $25 in your pocket, being nonchalant.

But anyway, he just trusted God, and Oscar said, “We’ll go down in a little bit and sign the papers at the bank.  And you can have the house.  Anna and I are going to move out right away.”

OR: How about the down payment?

ER: Well, when we got to the bank, let’s get the story straight, when we got to the bank, and he started to sign the papers, Oscar said, “Oral, wait a minute.  Anna and I don’t need the $3,000 down today because we’re going to build a home, and we don’t need it for a year.  So why don’t you just hold the down payment for a year and pay us at the end of the year?  Then you can pay for the house later.”

Oral said, “Well, just as you say, Oscar.”

And we were not looking? at that point, we didn’t know what we were doing, but we were not looking to Oscar Moore as our source either.  We didn’t know those terms at that time, Oral.

OR: This was a little 2 bedroom house on North Main for $6,000, that was the price.  Some of you can remember back in the late? 40s and ’50s when property didn’t sell for very much.  It just looked like much because we didn’t have any money.

And that was the first time that my mind opened: that what we give is a seed of our faith.

And the man left, and Evelyn was looking around the corner of the bedroom.  And I went over and just shook this in her face. And we sat on the bedside, maybe for an hour, talking about this. Crying, and wondering what was up.

I’d never walked in my sleep, but Evelyn had found me one night walking around the house in the middle of the night, and I was asleep, walking in my sleep.  And she’d call me in.  And that night she asked me what was going on.

ER:  He had been called into the healing ministry many years ago, but he had never told me, and we’d been married 8 years or so, because Rebecca was about 7, 6 or 7.  So we’d been married a while, and he had never told me that he was called to the healing ministry.

But I knew he had a restlessness in his spirit.  There was something going on.  I did not know what, but I knew something. And when I caught him walking in his sleep, I called him in and, and I said, “Oral, you’ve got to sit down here and tell me what’s going.  Something is going on in your spirit.”

He said, “Yes, Evelyn, God’s called me into the healing ministry, and He’s told me its time. And I don’t know how to do it.  I don’t know what to do.”

I said, “Oh, yes, you do know, Oral.”

He said, “OK, I do.  I’ll fast, and I’ll pray until God gives me the answer.”  And he went to the church, and he lay on the floor, and he said, “God, I will not get up until you tell me how to go into the healing ministry.”

ER: That’s when he told you, Oral, that you had to read the four Gospels and the Book of Acts in 30 days, three times.  And He said, “I will show you Myself, if you will do that, and do it on your knees, three times in 30 days, I’ll show you.”  

And he did, and Jesus just rose up off of those pages, and he could see Him.  And these miracles began to happen.  May I tell about Mr. Gus?

OR: Well, I think I should say something here that’s very important to somebody in this crowd.  Of course I know what we’re saying this morning may not be just like you have gone through things.  But some of you are facing certain things this morning in your life.  You’ve come to a point that things aren’t working. There’s a restlessness.  You’re disturbed in yourself.  You’re wondering if this whole thing works.

The devil had said to him, “It’s for the rest of your life.  You’ve thrown your life away.”  There may be someone here today who’s thrown your life away.  You may have thrown your marriage away.  You may have thrown your family away. You may have broken with your family, and the devil has said to you, “You’ll never be reconciled to your family again. You will never solve your marriage problem.  You have a son, and you’ll never be reconciled to him.  You have a daughter, and you’ll never be at peace with each other again.”

Whenever you hear something like that, remember who it’s from.  It’s not from God.  God says, “For this light problem is but for a moment.”  In God’s eyes, He’s waiting for the now moment to come into our minds, the now consciousness to take hold of us to where we get a time limit.  “Devil, there’s a time limit on you.  Problem, there’s a time limit on you.  Sickness, there’s a time limit on you.  Problem with my family, there’s a time limit on you.  Sickness in my body, there’s a time limit on you.”

I’m absolutely convinced now after these months of dealing with this as a guinea pig, of saying, “If it works on Oral Roberts, it will work on somebody else,? and I’m going to come out of this.  (Applause)

The Lord said, “You give this to the people at ICBM. This is not a special word.  This is a word of revelation. Your brother gave you the thought.”  And I want to praise him.  I want to thank him for giving me the seed thought. But the Lord has developed the idea in my mind and in my body.  And I’ve been going through everything I’m talking to you about.  And I’m closer to home than I was when I came here.  I’m closer to my healing than I was.  I’m closer. I’m closer to solving this major problem in my life.  Just because I’m 85 doesn’t mean my ministry has to stop. (Applause)

The prodigal son heard the devil say, “You will be like this the rest of your life.  You’ve cut every line loose from your daddy.  You’ve spent all your money.  You have nothing left.  All your friends are gone.  It’s over.”

And then the Bible says that he came to himself.  Is there such a thing when a problem gets so severe and sickness so bad and a situation that weights you down so much that you really are not at yourself?  I felt for that approximately six weeks” time that I was not at myself.  I couldn’t think straight.

Something GOOD is going to happen to you!  Thank you.  Thank you.  Well, good morning, everybody.  (Response)  You sure look great to me.  I’ve not seen a crowd like this since December, the first Sunday, and I’m delighted to be back in the pulpit.  Praise God!  (Applause)

This antique dealer was always on the lookout for a bargain, and when he traveled he would go to secondhand stores and other places that handled antiques and was always looking for a bargain.

And he came to this secondhand store and looked in the door, and there was a cat drinking milk from an old bowl, a beautiful cat.  And he watched and was admiring the cat, and suddenly he realized that bowl was not an ordinary bowl.  It was an antique worth a lot of money.

And he said to himself, “This old boy won’t know that. I can buy this for a little of nothing.”  And he went in and picked up the cat and began to stroke it and said to the merchant, “What a beautiful cat!  I’ve been wanting a cat like this for a long time.  Would you sell me this cat?”

And the merchant said, “Sure.  If you’ve got $50, the cat’s yours.”  So he paid him and was stroking the cat and reached down and picked up the old bowl and said, “By the way, I notice he’s used to this bowl.  I believe I’ll just take it along with me.”  The merchant said, “You put that bowl down.  That’s the best cat seller I’ve ever had.”  I don’t know why I told that.  I just felt like telling it.

My goodness, Richard, what a beautiful, beautiful crowd.  I’m here this morning to share not only the Word of God with you and a new revelation from the Holy Spirit, but to talk to you a little about my life.  I’m 85 years old, and I’ve never been 85 before.  And Evelyn is a lot older than I am.  She’s 86.  She’s nine months older than I am. I’ve always wanted an older woman.  She’s been a great help to me in guiding me along the way.

But what has happened is that getting to be 85 and 86 slipped up on us.  We never really realized we were getting that old.  We never thought about being old.  We got to be 80, 81, 82.  Things were fine.  And then we began to slow down some.  We began to feel pains that we hadn’t felt before.  And certain things began to attack us.  And prayers didn’t seem to get through quite as readily as they did when we were 30 and 40 years of age, particularly for pain in our bodies.

 And when that man died, I went to his funeral out of respect.  There were 30 people, and he had helped 20 Christian colleges.  Not one president was there “cause he had been so stingy with them and held them down, and their little schools are badly located and have 300 to 400 students, and they have a hard time operating.  That’s the kind of legacy he left in the world.

Well, I’m going to be leaving the world in a few years, but I want to leave something more than concrete blocks. …APPLAUSE…

Well, I’m going to get off of the first Psalm and go to Ephesians 6, because this sermon has to do with the beginning and the ending of the Christian witness.  Listen carefully to me, not because it’s me, but because I’ve worked through this.  I’ve received revelation that God took David, who is the father of Jesus Christ…  Jesus Christ is the seed of David.  David is the first man that God really had on this earth that he could really do something with. It was David who provided the money and the plans for the temple.  David personally wrote a check for a half billion dollars for the new temple for his son, Solomon, to use.

It is David who wrote most of the Psalms.  It is David who really is the father, from a spiritual standpoint, of the Messiah.  And when you read the first chapter, God is laying out the plan for His people for all ages.  And we’re not to think that the Old Testament is meaningless.  God laid out the beginning of what we are in the first Psalm.

Just read that first Psalm over and over till you memorize it like I’ve done.  I say it every day of my life and every night of my life.  And become like a tree planted.  God put you where He wants you.  He plants you there.  He plants you by the rivers, and the rivers are flowing up out of your belly.  And the Holy Ghost is coming up, and you’re praying in a new language, and you’re solving problems inside yourself.

I have been hit so hard and knocked down so many times there’s no way I could be sitting here alive this morning. But I’m telling you, I have prayed in tongues and interpreted so many times, the devil has not been able to kill Oral Roberts.  …APPLAUSE…  And I want you to know that I pray in tongues every day of my life, every night of my life. I pray to interpret what God is saying back to me because in that way I heard His voice.

And in the early 60s, when God told me the time came to build Him a university based on His authority and on the Holy Ghost, then He began to raise up people like Father Bennett of the Episcopal Church, and Dr. Howard Irvin of the Baptist Church, baptized with the Holy Ghost.  And the spread of speaking in tongues started over this nation in a brand-new way.

And it began anew in me as I walked these desolate grounds with no buildings, and no money, and no know-how to build God a university, the speaking in tongues rose up within my inner being as I was out here by myself, with nothing out here but a house and a barn and a command of God.

And I didn’t know how to interpret, as the Bible had said.  “He that speaketh in tongues, let him pray that he will interpret.”  Well, after I had spoken in tongues, it just flowed up out of me out of my desperation for God to show me what to do.  Then the interpretation came, and I didn’t even know it was an interpretation at the time.

And I saw the vision of what you are in now.  What you’re in now, I saw everything, and it came through speaking in tongues and interpretation of tongues and the prophetic power of God that came upon me.

I went to our house and told Evelyn, and she knew I spoke in tongues, but not often.  And I really did not understand speaking in tongues.  I just knew that it was in the Bible and you should have it.

And she thought maybe I had gone off the deep end at first.  But when she saw that it was real, she said, “I want you to help me go into it.”  And she was having a difficult time bringing forth the tongues, although she had spoken in tongues at times.

I said, “Honey, when I start praying in tongues, I’ve learned I can pray in tongues at will.”  And as the tongues came up, I said, “Just lift up your voice, open your mouth. You can’t talk if you don’t open your mouth.  Lift up your voice and start with me.”    She said, “You mean, start as you start?”

“Yes.  But the Lord will then take you into your own language.”

And she did what I said, and God gave her a beautiful language, which has gone from language to language.  And she and I out here on these grounds were the beginning of Oral Roberts University.  Praise God.  …APPLAUSE…

If I drink a little extra water, pay no attention, because since surgery my mouth has been dry.  But I hope it will loosen up.

Of course, we didn’t have any money for it, and I got ten of my men together.  We walked down on this flat piece of ground, and I said, “Let’s each give the biggest bill we have in our wallets and plant the seed to start the building of this center.”  And we all reached in for our biggest bill, and we laid it on the table, and it came to $211.  And we started an $11 million building with $211.  (Applause)

But we planted out of our need, and we aimed our seed.  We aimed it toward this building.  And not only has it been the place where we went to the Final Eight in basketball and became nationally known immediately in 1974, but millions of people, over sixteen million people have been in this building in events like this, and ballgames, etc., since that time.

And now if you had to rebuild this place with our studio, it would cost $30 some odd million.  We started with $211.  We aimed it.  God aimed His Son as His seed toward our salvation. Whatever you do, give out of your need and aim it.  You folks who are giving tonight, aim it.  Aim it at a need in your life, at what you want God to do in your life because your seed is not physical.  It’s your faith.  Your seed is your faith, and your faith is your seed.  Say, “My seed is my faith.  My faith is my seed.  That’s why I plant my seed out of my need, and I aim it toward a desired result, toward a harvest.  And I’m going to receive.  Then I’m going to give again and receive again.  And I’m going to get in a rhythm of giving and receiving, of sowing and reaping, of seedtime and harvest.  And I’m going to get my needs met, all of them.  Amen.”  (Response)  (RR talking in background)

Okay, Richard, if you keep on, I won’t get through tonight. Last year in the month of February of last year I was struck down by the devil’s attack on my body, like Job was in the Bible.  And for three weeks I was unconscious.  And my wife and a neighbor of ours, who is sitting by my wife tonight, were there almost day and night praying in tongues.  And the ten doctors were working feverishly that I wouldn’t die, because it wasn’t my time to die.  But the devil was trying to kill me.

And when I came to and looked around in the hospital room, saw Evelyn, I said, “Honey, how much money do we have in the bank?”  She said, “I don’t know, Oral.”  I said, “Find out, and write the biggest check that you can as a seed and aim it toward my healing.  The devil is not going to kill me.  I’m going to live out my days.  I’m going to preach the Gospel.”  (Applause)

And I came here last June with a tube in my side, being fed by that tube in my side and I was to preach.  And the devil said,  ”You will fall out while you preach.”  But just before I came here I pulled that thing out.  Really, I didn’t pull it out.  I authorized the doctor.  He didn’t want to, but I said, “If you don’t, I will.”  And he pulled it out.

And it happened, and she never let me forget.  She kept reminding me of the way my birth came about.  It was a natural birth, but talking about her vow.  And then she gave me advice, and you’d be surprised what my mother said to me over and over and over.  It was always the same thing.  And she said two things to me:  “Oral, always obey God.  Oral, keep little in your own eyes.”  And she didn’t say it once.  She didn’t say it ten times, a hundred times.  She kept saying it until the day she died.  The last time I saw her at 89 years of age, and I bent over to kiss her, she whispered to me, “Oral, always obey God.  Keep little in your own eyes.”

Why did she say that?  Because she knew I had a tendency that when I had a success or God healed, gave a great miracle to my ministry or thousands came down the aisles to be saved or I built the university, that I’d get the big-head.  The mothers know these things, that I’d get big in my own eyes.  And she knew I had a tendency to disobey God, that I would take the credit to myself.

 And there have been thousands of times when I’ve been tempted to disobey God, to escape criticism, to escape persecution, to escape what the media was doing to me all those years, and the times that people tried to kill me by shooting at me and things like that.  And it’s really easy at times or it seems easy to walk away.  But Mama said, “Oral, always obey God, and keep little in your own eyes.”

The Bible says it’s better to obey than to sacrifice.  And if Mama got to me at all, she got to me in those two things.  She burned inside my being, “Obey God.  Keep little in your own eyes.”

I know who built this university.  I know it wasn’t me.  I know who has done the great things through my life.  I know God has done those things.  I know it.  I know when I was on my own, I was losing my life, with tuberculosis, which was the scourge of the Indian people, still is here in Oklahoma where I was born. And obedience has brought me here to my 82nd year.  And I stand tall, and of course very slim and debonair.  (Applause)

If somebody thinks this is unscriptural, just keep on thinking it because I just read it to you in the Bible.  It’s in the Word of God.  How many of you … just nod your head … are you ready for the thousand times more?  In the name of Jesus, I pronounce the thousand times blessing upon your life and I call that which is not as though it were in your life, in Jesus’ mighty name.  (Response)

RR: I add my prayers to his prayers, and according to the Word of God which has been read and preached tonight, which I’ve received in my own spirit, I call upon you the thousand times blessing.  And I receive it with you by faith.  I call that which is not as though it is.  I call it done, in Jesus’ name.

MH: I want us to focus on land.  Brother Roberts said that God’s promise was to possess the land.  Over half of the people in your church and mine rent houses and don’t own them.  All of our churches and ministries need land to do the work of God.  If you want to claim that promise to possess land, I want you to agree with me right now.

And we pronounce it in the name of Jesus, and those things which have been decreed, release, devil, release, release your hold on the land that rightfully belongs to the covenant people of God, in the name of Jesus.  And it will be given and it will be inherited and it will be purchased and it will be paid for and it will be debt-free, in the name of Jesus.  (Response)

OR: These two sections, all the way, all the way to the top.  Start touching every part of your body, every part, every part, every part.  Stoop over and touch your feet even.  Every part.  Touch the shoulder of your neighbor.  Put one hand on yourself and the rest of you stretch your hands out toward them.

Look upon me.  Moses is not here, but I am here tonight as a servant of God.  And I look you in the eye.  By the Word of God, I speak the prophetic utterance upon your life, that God is going to give you a thousand times more than you are.  He’s going to make you a thousand times more.  He’s going to open your mind to possibilities you never thought existed.  You’re going to be receiving ideas from heaven that will startle you.  The power of God will open you up like a suitcase is opened up, and the healing power of God will start penetrating your being.  Glory to God!  I feel that.  Ohhh!

Number five, He said, “You tell the people, ‘You shall renew your strength like the eagle’s.’”  The eagle, when it gets old and weak, flies off to an isolated place in the mountains, beats off its old feathers, becomes naked and vulnerable, while it grows new feathers.  And in the new feathers is new strength, and it remains strong until it dies.

And the Lord said, “Tell My people I don’t want you to have to be decrepid as you grow old.  I want you to start believing and thinking and working right now, that when you get up in years that you’re not decrepid, that you still have strength, you have health, because you don’t have to be sick for Me take you to heaven.”  Glory to God!  Ohh!  (Response)  Hallelujah!

Number six, He said, “You are God’s property.  And tell the devil to take his hands off God’s property.”

I want my darling wife to tell you a personal experience that she and I had just a few months ago.

ER: We had been over to Myles Munroe’s church … where is he?  I saw him sitting here a while ago … ministering, and we came back to Fort Lauderdale to spend the night and had gone down to have dinner.  We came upstairs, and I put my purse on the table.  And as I did, the table started to shake.  The bed started to shake. I was shaking.  The room was shaking.

And Oral had walked in the other room, and I said to him, “Honey, you know, I didn’t know they had earthquakes in Florida. And I just thought they had earthquakes in California.  They’re having an earthquake.”  And he said, “No, they’re not having an earthquake.”  And I said, “Well, they are too.  This room is shaking.”  “Well, it’s not shaking in here.”  I said, “You come in here and you’ll feel it shaking.”      

Well, he came in my room and he stood there a moment and he said, “No, Evelyn, the room is not shaking.”  Then I realized the devil was trying to put something on me.  And, you know, we don’t have to accept what the devil puts on us.  We can either take it or we can leave it, and I chose to leave it.

I realized that in my life I had had a fear of having a stroke.  You know, sometimes the devil will work through a fear in your life and tell you, you know, “You’re going to have a stroke,” and so every little thing that happens, “This is a stroke the devil told me I was going to have,” you know.