Jesus wants to come to you, just where you are. He knows your name; He knows your life. He knows everything about you. And He wants to come and meet with you. He will touch your life and make you whole. He loves you.
Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (which means “son of Timaeus”), was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”
Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.”
So, they called to the blind man, “Cheer up! On your feet! He’s calling you.” Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus.
“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him.
The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.”
“Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road. (Mark 10:46-52.)
I began working in the Soviet Union in 1961. For thirty of these years, I worked under communism. In 1990 I was evangelising in Bulgaria; when I was invited to speak in a large church in Sofia, the pastor fled town, he was so afraid of what the communists might do to him afterwards! The next day, I was invited to speak in a church on the far side of Bulgaria, in Yambol. The building was packed out, and the Power of God was so strong, the young people under the Power of the Holy Spirit were speaking in pure English! Sensing the move of God, I got the idea to take a stadium to evangelise openly. The local pastors warned me it was impossible, nevertheless they went with me to ask for permission. Predictably the communist director of the stadium said, “It’s against our law to rent you the stadium.” But then he added, “There is nothing in our law to stop us giving it to you for free!”
I shall never forget the dramatic and exciting evangelism we held in Yambol, Bulgaria, before communism finally fell there. It was August. The music group Vinesong and I arrived the day before the opening. What could we do? Nothing? No!!! So, without permission, we decided to hold an open-air service in the big square in front of the Communist Party Headquarters in Yambol! This city of 100,000 had never witnessed such scenes before! As darkness fell the beautiful worship music drew the crowds. But when Vinesong sang in Bulgarian, ‘I bow the knee to Jesus’ – the whole crowd, 10,000 strong, knelt in prayer with their hands raised in worship and acceptance of Christ! Even the communist police on duty took off their hats, and the Communist Party Flag, which until then had been fluttering bravely in the breeze, hung down limp as if it too was bowing before the Name of Jesus!
What a tremendous start it was to the conference and evangelism! The morning and afternoon teaching sessions in the sports stadium were filled with people hungry for the Word of God – and packed for the evening evangelism with 7,000 crowded in, people standing, 2,000 repenting… For four days, we witnessed the mighty Power of God, not only in conversions, but also in mighty miracles of healing. Night after night crutches were thrown onto the platform as people were delivered and walked out free. The blind, the deaf, the sick – all were healed. Revival swept from there – we travelled by road in broken down communist cars from church to church to church – the Power of God was falling – no time seemingly to eat, sleep or even drink a cup of tea! For two years the Holy Spirit moved across the whole of Bulgaria! Eighty new churches were opened as a direct result of that evangelism!
In my experience, miracles don’t happen easily. In evangelism, yes; I have only that one opportunity to win the lost for Christ – I tells them, if the Gospel I have preached is true, there will be miracles – and if this Gospel is not true, there will be no miracles. – But there always are! Most of them are instant, it is a public demonstration of the Power of God to answer prayer, it builds faith. But on a personal level, it is always a battle. Every time I have a problem, God asks me, do you want the easy way or the hard way? The easy way is the normal way – let the doctor operate, sit out your term in prison. The hard way is when you pray – and God works a miracle! But miracles don’t come easily. In that prison I chose the hard way – and God worked the miracle!
I’d like to tell you that when I was in prison God simply worked a miracle and God opened those prison doors. What I don’t often tell you is the price that I had to pay in the prison. You know seven days a week in a prison in Czechoslovakia – they were all the same, there was no difference between Monday and Sunday – except Sundays were worse. I was used to going to the House of God and setting aside Sunday as a day when I could worship the Lord. The only thing I could do in the prison to mark Sunday as different from any other day was to fast. There wasn’t much food to fast from, but I had to do something to acknowledge God. Then I had to ‘learn how’ to pray. Have you ever tried to pray in a prison when you are watched 24 hours a day, a spy-hole in the door, the lights left burning 24 hours a day – they never put the lights out, so they can look through the window and watch you. If you get up from your bed everybody has to get up, what one does the others must do, if you have a jacket on, the others must have a jacket on, if you take a jacket off, everyone has to take their jacket off. Before you went to bed at night you had to leave your boots in a certain place, and the guards night after night would come in and tell us that our boots were in the wrong place and they’d beat us up and order us to move them, just simply to keep us from sleeping. You try and pray under that! But I had to get into the discipline that I would. There was a price to be paid.
The official sentence for bringing Bibles was five years, and because I was preaching the Gospel in the prison, that was another five years. I could have been there ten years! In the West, your sentence is routinely shortened, but whilst I was in that communist prison I saw how sentences were routinely increased. One man who was released at the end of his term, was re-arrested outside the prison gate and given another long sentence! I know, they put him in my cell! I did not want to spend ten years of my life in prison, in a foreign country! I wanted to be free, to do the work of God! Paul and Silas in the Bible were in prison – and when they prayed, God sent a powerful earthquake and opened the prison doors. If He could do it for Paul and Silas, He could do it for me!
It came to the day before my birthday, April 16, 1973. A guard came to the place where the prisoners were working and called out my name. He was angry, “Why are you telling the other prisoners that you are going home?” Well, I did it because I wanted my fellow-prisoners to know that when it happened, it was not the Communists who let me out, but a demonstration of the Power of God to answer prayer! I preached Christ in prison, and now it must be a demonstration that the God who delivers from sin can also break open the prison door! The guard was shouting at me, showing me the seven-metre high wall, the machine-gun towers, the electric fences, the guard dogs: “No one can get out of this prison alive!” I returned to my workbench in despair, put my head in my hands and cried, “Oh God, how can I go home tomorrow? It’s absolutely impossible!” And then God asked me, “How do you know that you are saved?!” I began to argue, “I’m an evangelist, of course I know that I am saved! I do not rely on my feelings or on circumstances or on what people say – I rely on Your Word! And Your Word says: ‘Whosoever shall call upon the Name of the Lord shall be saved! It’s in Romans 10:13!” And God said, “Did I tell you that you were going to go home tomorrow?” I replied, “Yes, You did, but it’s impossible!” At that moment the very same guard who had been so angry with me, called out, “Hathaway! We’ve just received a telephone call from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – you’re to be released!” God is not a man, He never lies, He doesn’t change His mind, He doesn’t make mistakes, He does what He says! – Numbers 23:19. No, I was not released on that day, the 16th. But I did get out, on my birthday, April 17th, exactly as God had showed me.