Interview With Derek Prince (Part 8)

Geoff Buck: How can our listeners pray for you in the days to come?

Derek Prince: Well, pray that God will keep me in line with His will and that He’ll give me the strength and the health that I need to complete my assignment. That’s really what I need.

Geoff Buck: I remember your speaking in Kemper Arena in 1977. You were aged sixty-two and I remember sitting back as a young person thinking, “I think that he’s probably kind of winding down and coming toward the end of his ministry.” Here we go years later as you are continuing to seek the Lord and to touch the nations. Could it be that we’ve got, as we were talking about earlier, a generation of young people in which there might be another Derek Prince? Do you ever see that kind?

Derek Prince: I don’t envisage another Derek Prince. I don’t say that out of pride, I just don’t feel that it’s in God’s… But I do think there’s another generation that’s going to make an impact around the world. And I think it’s very close at hand.

Geoff Buck: Now how old were you when you met the Lord?

Derek Prince: I was twenty-five.

Geoff Buck: When you were in that Army barrack room and the Lord revealed Himself to you, did you have any sense of where ministry or life or Christianity would take you?

Derek Prince: No, no, no. But I was completely free. I mean, I wasn’t attached to anything. So God, in a way, never really had to detach me. Well He did have to detach me from my Cambridge career. But that wasn’t very difficult, because by the time I’d spent five years walking with the Lord, philosophy meant nothing to me, had no attraction for me. I’d have gone crazy if I’d started back to teach philosophy.

Geoff Buck: Is it true that you taught at Cambridge at the same time as C. S. Lewis?

Derek Prince: Well, we were at Cambridge at the same time and in fact he was at the next college. I was in King’s; he was in Queen’s. But, you know, I never even heard of him all the time I was there. My world was so totally different from his.

Geoff Buck: Now you were something of a radical young person. In a sense, a seeker of truth. And I even heard you say something recently about going down to south of France and some kind of a gambling scenario and do you care to tell our listeners about that?

Derek Prince: Well I’m not very proud of it, but in my last year or two at Eton I had two or three friends and we concluded that we’d stumbled on a system of roulette which you can make a fortune. So we put together a little money and I was chosen to be the one mainly to go and play roulette. So I would go down to the south of France to Cannes and Monte Carlo and play the system. By the grace of God, we really never lost any money. I discovered later that the man who invented the system whose name was Abuchert’ (?), died a pauper. So that should have warned me that, anyhow I know what you’re leading up to.

So I, I mean I enjoy heat. Cold I don’t enjoy. Heat and sunshine and sparkling water and sand. So I was always very happy in Cannes and Monte Carlo and I would spend some months there. And I would wander around suitably attired wearing sandals. And one of the things I’ve always wondered—I mean, I’ve never been able to explain it, but I decided to color my toenails red you know, with red nail polish. But I, analyzing it, I thought to myself, it was a kind of wordless protest. There must be more to life than people are telling me about. And so when I see young people now doing strange things like a blonde girl coloring her hair blue, I say I think I understand you. What you’re telling us is you’re not satisfied. There must be more. Why don’t you tell me about it? So I’m not one who criticizes or throws stones at young people who do strange, bizarre things because I did them myself. Actually there were no hippies in the day when I was in that phase. Otherwise, I would certainly have been a hippie. But there was no hippiedom to express it.

Geoff Buck: It’s always been a delight to me to see how much you enjoy being around young people and you’re something of an adventurous person. I seem to recall being with you in a conference in 1977 in Kansas City and you went over to the amusement park nearby, Worlds of Fun. I believe you went on the roller coaster if I recall.

Derek Prince: I think I did, but I wouldn’t do it again. I really didn’t enjoy it.

Geoff Buck: You made a statement once that I never forgot. You were speaking about Moses and Elijah and Paul. And you were seeking to put into biblical framework the whole discussion of discipleship and teaching and trans-local authority. You made this statement: “God disciples the pioneer.”

Derek Prince: Yeah, well, let me put it this way. I believe discipleship is a principle of God. It should be implemented and I am glad to see it when it is. But there are some people who are pioneers who can’t be discipled because there’s nobody who’s done it before. And two of the obvious people I think Elijah and John the Baptist and obviously there’s a close relationship between their ministries. There was nobody to disciple Elijah. There was nobody to disciple John the Baptist. So the Lord did it Himself and the Lord is free to do that anytime He wants. But it’s the exception and not the rule. I think in a way I’d have to say the Lord has discipled me. I mean I would have been very willing to go to some Bible college or something like that, but it never even occurred to me that that was what God wanted me to do. And I’m not saying there’s no place for Bible colleges, although I do think basically that’s not really the Scriptural pattern for training people for the ministry. I think discipling is the basic pattern. But unfortunately there’re not so many people who are willing to disciple. It’s one thing to stand in a classroom and give a lecture and write things on the blackboard. It’s another thing to share your life with somebody in the thick and in the thin. Share your disappointments and your failures. That’s discipling and we need a hundred times more of it than we have in the contemporary church.

Geoff Buck: In watching your life it has been amazing how God has directly intervened to teach you things and train you things, and how great events in your life have turned on the simplest of experiences. Do you remember in 1979 being at the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri and hearing a young man give a prophecy about witchcraft?

Derek Prince: Vaguely. I don’t remember it clearly.

Geoff Buck: At this family conference a young man stood up at the back and gave this prophetic utterance that the spirit of witchcraft had held millions of men in domination and captivity and the Spirit of God was going to breath upon men across America and across the world and set them free from the dominance of Jezebel and witchcraft to become the men of God they were destined to be.

Derek Prince: I do recall it now. I had forgotten it. And I would say it was most certainly a word from God.

Geoff Buck: That kind of prophecy has been something that you’ve heard and acted upon in the years that I’ve followed you in your own personal life where God has spoken to you.

Derek Prince: Yes, I do definitely. I mean, after all, if God is going to speak by prophecy how foolish we would be if we don’t listen to what He says and obey. But I’m very cautious about personal prophecy. Of course that prophecy in a way was not a personal prophecy, and it certainly is being fulfilled and will fulfilled much more I would say.

But when it comes to personal prophecies, I am very cautious. I don’t want anybody to dictate to me their ideas of what they think I should do. But I have had at times had prophecies which I really felt were from the Lord and encouraged me and opened up a new way for me.

Geoff Buck: Do you believe that the Lord Jesus will return soon to the earth?

Derek Prince: It depends how you interpret soon. I mean, next week I think is a little too early. Next year could be too early. But events are moving so fast and we’re caught up in such in a whirlwind of activity that I wouldn’t like to say. People have asked me at times, “Do you think you’ll be alive when Jesus comes?” My answer is, “I don’t expect to be, but I certainly could be.” There are a lot of things that have to be done. They can be done very quickly and we wouldn’t know necessarily whether they’ve been done or not. So we can’t say until I see this, this and this He won’t come. But I personally feel that there’s going to be one more great move of God across the earth. And one of the things it will do is prepare the Bride for the Bridegroom. Because the message is His wife has made herself ready. And years and years ago I pastored a small congregation in London, England. We had a dear Jamaican sister there and when she prayed she always prayed the same thing. “Lord help us to remember that it won’t be enough to be getting ready. We’ll have to be ready when You come.” And I think there’s a great deal to be done still to make the Bride ready.