Interview With Derek Prince (Part 3)

Geoff Buck: I have some beautiful memories of pictures of Lydia. For example some of very early Derek Prince Newsletters, some beautiful pictures of Lydia praying for people, particularly young women for deliverance. She apparently had a tremendous gift or ability to minister in that area. Is that?

Derek Prince: Yes, and that was before I really had fully come into the full teaching on deliverance. So if, when she was praying for somebody who needed deliverance from a demon and she didn’t want the person to know, she would pray in Danish, you see. A lot of people got delivered from demons without knowing what had happened to them. Oh, she had a gift of healing too. She would just pray and the funny little noise, and there you are. It was an education. It was a privilege, but believe me it was challenging.

Geoff Buck: Well, you were led by the Lord as you mentioned earlier from the cliff top to enter into a new phase by faith. And I think not much beyond, after that time, the Lord having spoken to you about having a healthy body, you were in that ministry of deliverance. And I think you ministered all across America. As I now travel and represent you in speaking conferences, I meet people all over the country in small towns, out of the way places, big cities, that remember Derek and Lydia coming to their city. You must have some amazing memories and stories. Can you think of some of those times that you were traveling in the 60s, 70s?

Derek Prince: Well, of course God thrust me into the ministry of deliverance. I didn’t apply for it. I didn’t volunteer. And at that time it was very controversial. The big question was, “How can a Spirit filled Christian have a demon?” And people never bothered to seek for an answer; they just dismissed it as impossible. In fact at one time I worked closely with Don Basham whom you also knew. And a major Pentecostal denomination in the United States official classified us as heretics because we were casting demons out of Christians. So I said to Don, “What do they expect us to do? Leave the demons in the Christians?” But of course that wasn’t the way they were thinking.

There was tremendous opposition and negative response, but basically there’s still some of that, but most of it has been accepted and like you, I can go to places and somebody will say, “You remember you prayed for me and I was delivered?” I say, “No I don’t remember, but I believe it happened.”

Let me tell you about one woman. This is in a university in Michigan where we discovered a year later that the rules of the university no religious meetings were ever to be held, but we held one there and it was on deliverance and basically it was the young generation of the sixties. And I taught on deliverance and I taught for a long while and then we had called people forward. And a friend of mine whom you know, Jim Croft, said he saw this young woman, very smart, very well dressed, carrying her handbag, come forward. And when I commanded the demons to come out she went down on her knees and bit the rail of a chair in front of her. So that place I remember I said about 6 o’clock in the evening I said to Lydia, “I think we’ll go out and have a little supper and come back.”

So I handed the meeting over to Erik Krueger, whom you know, and came back an hour later and they were still conducting deliverance. People who haven’t been in those situations can’t, they can’t visualize what it was like.

Geoff Buck: There was a tremendous visitation of God upon America upon the late sixties, the early seventies. You were involved with Steve Clark and some of the people in the Roman Catholic movement in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Do you have memories of those associations?

Derek Prince: I have very precious memories with some of those leaders—Steve Clark and Ralph Martin, yes.

Geoff Buck: Cardinal Suenens.

Derek Prince: Cardinal Suenens, I just went on one trip with him to Israel through Belgium. You know he was from Belgium. Well I ended up in an Armenian Church laying hands on a Roman Catholic Cardinal and praying for God’s blessing on his fifty years in the ministry. I never would have believed that that could happen. But those days anything could happen really. And I really loved those days and I look forward to more hilarious days in the future. I think they’re very close at hand. I think they’re coming again, a tremendous groundswell of spiritual hunger especially amongst the young people.

Geoff Buck: There was a very special time in the late sixties and early seventies. I met the Lord in the Jesus Movement in 1971 with many thousands of others and I stumbled into a meeting with you, Derek Prince, in 1973 in Kansas City. You’ll remember Second Presbyterian Church, 55th and Oak, and you were speaking…

Derek Prince: That’s the church where there were so many people in the church that people climbed in through the windows to get there. It was a good respectable Presbyterian Church too.

Geoff Buck: Those were amazing days for several reasons. One was that so many of these were very young men and women who were totally unchurched, but they were coming to listen to an older British gentleman teach the Bible. And I remember looking around in those meetings and asking myself, “What is it that they are receiving from this man?” And it seemed to me that they were looking for a father.

Derek Prince: Yeah, I believe you’re right. Also their motto was Tell It Like It Is. And that’s something I always seek to do is tell it exactly like is. I remember the first time I was asked to preach in a Catholic church in Kansas City. I thought well, “They’ll never ask me back so I might as well give it all in one go.” So I gave them everything—heaven, hell, demons, healing and all this. At the end a Catholic lady walked up to me and she said, “Mr. Prince, you’re more Catholic than our priest.” And I realized what a tremendous longing there is in people just to hear Tell It Like It Is, you know.

Geoff Buck: Those days were wonderful. I went and listened to you in 1973. We went to an evening service at 55th and Oak, there were a thousand young people there. There were no places left and I was stuck on the floor, looking up at you standing in the high Presbyterian pulpit about twenty feet above me. I remember getting a crick in my neck, but again that sense of the systematic teaching of the word, we were all so hungry, and you stepped into an historic time of visitation in America. And I believe you’re right. It’s going to happen again. What would it mean to you to see young people again swept into the kingdom in America?

Derek Prince: More than I can express. I would break down and weep, but I believe it’s coming. I really believe it’s on the way. And I thank God for many faithful men of God who’ve held the fort and not given way and not lowered the standard and they’ve prayed and fasted and waited and God is going to reward them.

As a matter of fact, I’ll tell you something. I won’t tell you the whole story, but I tell you some of it. In 1953 I was really burdened for Britain. I was British and I was ministering in Britain, living in Britain. And I was praying and fasting and one night about 2 a.m., the Lord spoke to me audibly. It’s the only time I’ve ever heard His voice audibly. And I’ll tell you a little of what He said. He said, “There shall be a great revival in the United States and Great Britain.” Then He told me a little bit about the part He had for me to play. But then He concluded, “But the condition is obedience in small things and in great things. For the small things are as great as the great things.” Because I’m so wrapped up in the Bible I went to the Bible and I studied all the places where it talks about small and great. Eighty percent of the time the small is mentioned before the great.

I also came to see that the issue is not whether it’s something small or great. The issue is obedience. And that’s one thing that God invariably demands. In fact it’s really the ultimate key to God’s blessing is obedience, doing what He says in His word, doing what He says to you personally, doing what He says to a congregation or a church. When we obey God, sooner or later His blessing is released.

Geoff Buck: I heard you give a message once to some young people in Ohio and the theme was how you addressed the Generation Gap. Do you recall your answer to that question?

Derek Prince: I think I probably said as far as I’m concerned there is no generation gap. Yeah. The people who really mean business, it doesn’t matter how young or how old they are, they’re all in the same category.