Urban Report

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

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Series Code: UBR

Program Code: UBR000261A


00:01 Stay tuned to find out
00:02 how one man's journey ended up having a worldwide impact.
00:05 My name is Jason Bradley,
00:07 and you're watching Urban Report.
00:32 Hello and welcome to Urban Report.
00:34 My guest today is Pastor CA Murray,
00:37 and he is the General Manager of the 3ABN Proclaim!
00:39 Network.
00:40 He is also one of my role models
00:42 and mentors.
00:44 And he has a very powerful testimony.
00:46 Welcome to Urban Report, Pastor Murray.
00:47 Good to be here.
00:49 I'm actually a fan of this show.
00:50 Oh.
00:52 Well, praise the Lord, praise the Lord.
00:53 You know, we go way back as far back as I can go.
00:57 Yeah.
00:58 And you actually baptized my mom
01:04 while she was pregnant with me.
01:05 Is that so.
01:06 That's how far back we go, and I appreciate that.
01:11 But, you know, our viewing audience knows you very well.
01:15 I'm sure they've seen you on 3ABN,
01:17 I'm sure they've seen you on Free Indeed.
01:21 And we want to get to know the man behind 3ABN Proclaim!
01:27 Oh, have mercy. So where did you grow up?
01:30 Where are you from? Buffalo, New York.
01:31 Okay. Yeah.
01:33 Grew up in the Emmanuel Temple Seventh-day Adventist Church
01:35 in Buffalo, New York,
01:36 baptized at age 10, only one in my family.
01:40 Wow.
01:41 Wait a minute, you were the only one
01:43 in your family to be baptized?
01:44 Really? Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
01:47 And how long did you live in Buffalo?
01:50 Until I went off to Oakwood,
01:52 went to Erie Community College on a basketball scholarship,
01:55 and then to Alliance College
01:56 in Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania,
01:58 on a basketball scholarship,
01:59 broke my ankle twice playing basketball
02:01 on a Friday night.
02:03 And the pastor said,
02:04 "You know, Lord let you break your ankle to keep it
02:05 from breaking your neck."
02:07 I got the message, transferred to Oakwood College
02:09 and graduated from Oakwood College.
02:10 Wow. Yeah.
02:11 Now going back to when you were 10 years old,
02:13 how did you come in to the message?
02:16 Oh, we lived next door to a family, the Riles Family.
02:20 We could play with them during the week,
02:22 couldn't play with them on Saturday
02:24 and couldn't understand that.
02:25 We just knew that on Saturday,
02:26 they couldn't come out and play with us,
02:28 and we couldn't go in their yard
02:29 and play with them.
02:30 We see them all pile in the car and disappear
02:32 and go someplace we didn't know where.
02:33 We moved to another part of town
02:35 and moved right across the street
02:37 from another family with that same weird behavior.
02:40 Play with them during the week, on Saturday,
02:41 everybody piles in the car and disappears for the day.
02:45 And the son was my age,
02:46 the daughter was my sister's age,
02:48 she's a year and a half older than I.
02:50 And so I asked the son, "Steven, where do you guys go
02:52 when you do this disappearing thing,
02:54 you know, on Saturday mornings?
02:56 He said, "We go to Sabbath school,"
02:57 which meant nothing to me.
02:59 So I said "Okay, next week when you disappear,
03:00 I want to go with you."
03:02 And so I went with him,
03:03 and I went to my first Sabbath school.
03:05 I'll tell you a quick story.
03:07 The teacher was Mildred Willis Gil.
03:11 I guess she was about 18 or 19,
03:13 maybe 20, certainly no older, and a pretty thing.
03:16 And when you got the question right
03:18 that she'd asked you, she would stroke your cheek
03:21 or put her hand on your shoulder
03:23 and say, "Very good."
03:24 Uh-huh.
03:26 And I saw her doing that and I said, "Ooh, I like that."
03:27 You know, so, like, next week,
03:30 I'm getting one of those, you know.
03:31 So I got to my Sabbath school
03:33 and I studied, studied, studied.
03:34 She asked the first question, I, like, put my hand up,
03:37 you know, and answered it correctly,
03:38 and she said, "Very good."
03:40 I said, "Okay, I'm coming to Sabbath school forever,
03:43 you know."
03:45 About a year or two later, she married Conrad Gil,
03:47 Pastor Conrad Gil, and all of us as young boys,
03:49 we hated him because he took away our,
03:52 you know, our Sabbath school teacher.
03:53 Years later, when I was at the seminary,
03:55 he was teaching at Andrews, and I had a chance to tell him,
03:58 "You know, 20, 30 years ago, I used to hate you, man,
04:01 because you took away our Sabbath school teacher."
04:03 She is retired now, living in Atlanta,
04:05 and every now and again, we will talk on the phone,
04:06 I tell her that story,
04:08 and she thinks it's hilarious 'cause she doesn't remember.
04:10 But her kindness brought me into the church.
04:13 Wow.
04:15 And then the church brought me to the Lord.
04:16 So when you're kind to a young person, point being,
04:18 you never know
04:19 what that's going to translate into
04:21 because she showed kindness to everybody,
04:23 but the guys, kind of, really liked it.
04:24 Yes.
04:25 And all of those guys stayed in the church, man,
04:27 because of that kindness shown, and certainly, in my life,
04:29 it was true.
04:30 Wow.
04:32 So that had a tremendous impact on you.
04:33 What did your family think when you came home?
04:36 When you started going to church
04:37 and then you ended up being baptized at 10 years old,
04:39 what did your family think?
04:41 My mom was like,
04:42 "Okay, I'm not doing that, you know, it's not for me."
04:44 You know, she was kind of a holiday Methodist.
04:46 Okay.
04:47 You know, my dad was,
04:49 kind of, all Robert Sunday morning,
04:50 that's plenty, that's enough, you know, kind of thing.
04:52 And my sister and brother,
04:54 kind of, just roll with the punches.
04:55 My mother said,
04:56 "If this what you want to do, okay, not for me,
05:00 but it's okay."
05:01 She had a great deal of respect for Adventist
05:03 because she saw their lifestyle.
05:05 So when I would disappear with their family all day
05:08 on Saturdays sometimes,
05:09 she never asked, she never questioned.
05:10 She knew I was with the Adventists
05:12 across the street,
05:13 and she had great respect for them.
05:15 So when I came home Saturday night,
05:16 she'd say, "Hey, how was the day-kind of thing."
05:18 But not a question
05:20 because she had that much love and respect
05:22 for what she saw, as Jesus, she saw in them.
05:24 Yeah.
05:25 So she was comfortable putting me
05:26 in their hands.
05:28 And what did your parents do? They worked hard, didn't they?
05:31 Your dad, what did your dad do?
05:33 My dad worked
05:35 for a New York Central Railroad.
05:36 He was actually a cook. Okay.
05:37 And he retired early, and he had a restaurant
05:40 for a while called the Silver Slipper.
05:42 Okay.
05:43 And so as a restaurant person,
05:45 you know restaurant work is hard and long,
05:46 Yes, it is.
05:48 Because when it's your restaurant,
05:49 it's on you.
05:51 You know, and it wasn't like a big restaurant.
05:52 It's, kind of, like a Rib Shack kind of a thing.
05:53 Okay.
05:55 And then my mom worked in the X-ray department
05:56 of Buffalo General Hospital.
05:57 So they were working people. Wow, wow.
05:59 And what impact did that have on your life
06:01 'cause you're a hard-working person?
06:03 I don't think I do...
06:04 You know, people look at you and judge, I just...
06:07 I liked Adventism. To this day, I like Adventism.
06:13 I like the role that God has called me to.
06:16 I had the privilege of baptizing my mom,
06:18 baptizing my dad one month
06:19 before he had a heart attack and died,
06:22 and then seeing my sister come to the Lord.
06:24 So my brother died of drugs at age 36,
06:28 but we got mom, dad, and my sister in.
06:32 And I can see there were times, you know, at times,
06:35 when I hated going to church, you know.
06:37 I had those wilderness years, playing basketball,
06:39 scholarship, and it never occurred to me
06:42 that I could stop, you know, I'd whine about,
06:44 "Now I got to go to church."
06:45 My mother said, "No, you don't. Stay home.
06:46 You know, I don't want to hear you whine,
06:48 just stay home."
06:49 "And now, I got to go."
06:50 So sometimes
06:52 we would play ball on Friday night,
06:53 go out and party till
06:55 about six o'clock in the morning,
06:56 I'd come home, study my Sabbath school lesson,
06:57 sleep for an hour, get up and go to church.
06:59 You know, that kind of thing.
07:01 You know, I had all these rules,
07:02 you know, I don't eat pork.
07:05 So I never ate pork, yeah,
07:06 but I was playing basketball on Friday night.
07:08 You know, all these kind of ways,
07:09 you're trying to justify your lifestyle.
07:10 Yeah.
07:12 And that's an interesting thing
07:13 because when I was in that world,
07:14 I still tried to justify things.
07:16 Yeah, yeah.
07:17 Like when I was out, I did eat pork,
07:20 but I'd only eat certain kinds of pork,
07:22 like that really made a different.
07:24 How ignorant is that? Yeah, it is, yeah.
07:26 Yeah, you do all these kind of things
07:28 that try to make yourself feel good,
07:29 you know, you're breaking the commandments.
07:31 You know, playing ball, broke the same ankle
07:32 in the same place,
07:34 the exact same break, two years in a row,
07:35 almost one year apart.
07:36 And the doctor said,
07:38 "It's very unusual to break your ankle,
07:39 the same ankle."
07:41 He hold up the x-rays, the same break.
07:42 So when I have to try on shoes, I do my left foot first
07:45 because it never quite healed correctly.
07:49 But, you know, you're not eating pork,
07:51 I'm not drinking, not eating pork,
07:52 but you're playing basketball on Friday night.
07:54 Yeah.
07:55 So what's, you know, sin is sin kind of thing.
07:57 So we do these kind of things. Yes, yes.
07:59 But that got me...
08:00 I, kind of, came to my senses, transferred to old College.
08:03 It was a whole new story 'cause I had no money,
08:05 my parents had no money,
08:07 and I was going to school on a scholarship.
08:08 Well, the scholarship was ended but Dr. Calvin Rock found
08:12 some money for me, and we got in Oakwood College,
08:15 worked our way through and graduated,
08:18 and then went on
08:19 to the seminary two years later.
08:21 Wow.
08:22 You know, what I want to know
08:23 is how you witnessed to your family.
08:26 I mean, you baptized your sister,
08:27 you baptized your mom and your dad,
08:30 how did you witness to them
08:32 because I think sometimes family
08:34 are the hardest people to witness to?
08:38 Mostly lifestyle, they weren't of the nature
08:42 that you could preach too much.
08:45 My mom ordered my dad,
08:47 but my dad would ask me questions,
08:50 and it occurred to me
08:51 that something is going on in his heart.
08:53 So basically, it was just living the life
08:57 and living the life consistently.
09:01 You know, it'd be funny,
09:03 and my family is great football family.
09:05 Even college football on Saturday, you come home,
09:08 my sister who was working as a nurse
09:10 had her own TV in a room,
09:12 my dad had a TV in the living room,
09:14 my mom had a TV in the bedroom.
09:16 So everybody's watching TV
09:17 because my family all watched TV very differently.
09:19 My sister screams at the television set,
09:22 you know, "For you, stupid."
09:24 She would, you know, throw things
09:25 at the television set.
09:27 So she has to watch TV by herself,
09:28 you can't watch TV with Donna 'cause she's berserk that way.
09:31 Uh-huh.
09:32 My mom always wanted it very quiet.
09:33 Uh-huh.
09:35 You know, she doesn't want any noise,
09:36 just the sound of the television set.
09:37 So all that screaming and hysteria on,
09:39 she didn't want that stuff.
09:40 And my dad was somewhere in the middle,
09:41 but he liked to watch TV, kind of, by himself.
09:43 So you got three TVs going on.
09:45 I'd have to walk past those three TVs
09:47 and go to my room, kind of close the door,
09:48 you know all those things, it's because...
09:50 Yeah, yeah.
09:51 And somehow that made an impression.
09:53 I didn't know at the time, but later on,
09:54 the fact that I would just pass all that stuff.
09:56 Yeah.
09:57 And the way I handled things,
10:00 and they had a healthy respect for the way Adventists lived
10:03 because they saw Christianity in the people
10:07 that we associated with.
10:09 And when my mother went to church,
10:10 everybody was so friendly to her,
10:12 which says a lot to greeting people
10:14 when they come to church that you don't know.
10:17 Whenever she came, they showed her love,
10:19 they showed her respect, that kind of thing,
10:21 and that planted a seed.
10:23 And then I went home, and I did a week of prayer.
10:26 And on a Friday night, I had preached all week,
10:28 and Friday night,
10:29 and I had one last Sabbath morning.
10:31 So I and the Lord determined
10:34 she's getting out of that seat tonight, you know.
10:36 So I preached Jason,
10:38 and I preached maybe 20 minutes,
10:40 and I appealed for another 30.
10:43 Whoa.
10:44 I mean, I went to the cross,
10:45 I held her over the flames of hell,
10:47 I did everything I could.
10:48 I said, "That woman is getting out,"
10:50 and I knew the Spirit was working
10:51 'cause she's sitting in a chair,
10:52 and she's rocking back and forth, tears coming down,
10:54 but she's not getting up, you know.
10:56 "Come to Jesus",
10:57 I'm, you know, appealing and appealing and appealing.
10:59 She's rocking and crying and rocking and crying.
11:02 And finally, after about 30 minutes,
11:04 up she popped,
11:05 but then we dismissed it, and it was done.
11:08 A couple of weeks later, no, a couple months later,
11:10 came back home, and we baptized her.
11:12 Wow.
11:13 And then my dad had a small heart incident.
11:18 And then in May, I came home,
11:21 we spent two days discussing
11:23 just the Word, flew back home in...
11:25 Drove back home in October from New York to Buffalo,
11:28 baptized him in ice cold water in Buffalo, New York
11:30 because the heater broke,
11:32 but I baptized him anyway, and I'm glad I did
11:34 because one month later, my mom said,
11:36 "Come home, your dad just passed."
11:38 So we got him in 30 days before he passed.
11:42 And I tell you, I tease Irma
11:43 because Irma's dad was also running from the Lord.
11:46 He gave his heart to the Lord two weeks
11:48 before he died, you know.
11:50 And so I said, "You've got to show off your dad.
11:52 My dad was 30 days, your dad two weeks."
11:54 Yeah, yeah, yeah. That king of a thing.
11:56 We tease like that, but both of us were so glad
11:58 that before they closed their eyes,
12:00 they both gave their hearts to the Lord.
12:01 Wow, praise the Lord for that. Yeah.
12:03 What made you want to go into ministry?
12:05 Always.
12:06 At age 10, a big storm came through Buffalo
12:11 and a bird's nest fell out of the tree.
12:13 And so we had a little funeral for this little baby bird,
12:16 you know, and that's when I delivered the eulogy
12:18 for the little bird, you know.
12:20 Wow.
12:21 And that was actually age nine,
12:24 from the time I did that little funeral,
12:25 our little group of kids for that baby bird,
12:27 we had a big funeral, man.
12:29 You remember what you said? I don't recall.
12:31 I just remember feeling very bad and saying,
12:34 "Boy, I want to do this, you know."
12:35 Wow.
12:37 And then watching the pastors at our church and listening
12:41 to what they said
12:43 and how people respond to do that,
12:45 it occurred to me that's what I wanted to do.
12:48 Yeah, very early. Wow, so early on.
12:50 And you've been now in ministry for how long?
12:54 Longer than I care to remember, 44 years.
12:59 Wow, okay.
13:01 And they seem so compressed, 30 years in New York City,
13:04 14 and change at 3ABN, and when you look back,
13:08 it seems like a snippet of time.
13:11 What are some stories, maybe some powerful testimonies
13:14 that you may have that you've witnessed?
13:17 You know, people coming to the Lord
13:19 or overcoming adversity.
13:22 What are some stories that you have?
13:24 You know, there are so many.
13:27 Every church that I pastored,
13:28 there were very, very strong stories.
13:33 I told this the other day to someone.
13:35 When I was pastoring,
13:37 one of my very first evangelistic crusades,
13:39 Sister Henrietta Austin
13:42 came running into my tent.
13:46 I remember because she's a tall woman.
13:49 If you take our Shelley Quinn is about six foot and slim.
13:53 If you take Shelley Quinn put about 75 pounds on her,
13:57 you got Henrietta Austin.
13:58 Not fat but just a big woman, you know, very attractive,
14:02 dressed very well.
14:03 I remember the first time I saw her,
14:04 she had on a red hat, red shoes, red bag,
14:07 blue two-piece suit with white piping.
14:10 It just stayed in my mind, that's years ago,
14:12 back in the 70s.
14:13 But she ran into the tent, and she sat down,
14:15 and she listened,
14:17 she came back the next night, she gave back the next night.
14:18 At the end of the meeting,
14:20 I think we baptized 57 in that meeting.
14:23 She was baptized. Wow.
14:25 She told me her story, she said,
14:27 "You know, the night I ran into your tent,
14:29 I was dating this guy,
14:30 and we were driving by the tent,
14:33 and we slowed down a little bit because we could hear
14:36 your voice coming out of the tent.
14:38 Well, about that time, he's getting all handsy,
14:40 you know, he's trying to kiss me
14:41 and touch me and rub on me and stuff.
14:42 So I jumped out of a car and ran into the tent
14:45 because I knew
14:46 he wouldn't follow me in there."
14:48 I remember because she ran into the tent,
14:50 you know, people just don't run into...
14:51 Really, but she ran into tent.
14:53 She said, "I had a fifth of Jack Daniels
14:55 or something in my bag
14:57 which I had half drunk before your meeting.
14:59 I finished it that night.
15:00 And that was the last time,
15:02 I ever touched liquor or alcohol
15:03 or cigarettes or anything."
15:05 And she stayed in the church, she was deaconess,
15:07 she loved the Lord, and sadly, she got Alzheimer's.
15:11 And she died sometime later.
15:13 But no one ever loved being
15:16 a Seventh-day Adventist Christian
15:17 more than Henrietta Austin while she could.
15:19 Wow. Wow. Wonderful, wonderful lady.
15:21 What other...
15:23 You got...
15:24 I know you have a lot of them.
15:25 In 44 years of ministry, I know you have a...
15:27 Tons of stories. Tons of stories.
15:29 Oh, my goodness.
15:30 In my book, "I Shall Fear No Evil",
15:33 I tell a story of a lady named Elisa.
15:35 This is when I was pastoring the Ephesus Church.
15:38 This is in the early days of AIDS,
15:40 when they really don't understand that disease.
15:43 She was diagnosed with AIDS, and I went to see her,
15:47 and what a godly woman.
15:49 She stands out in my mind because her husband had...
15:52 They had had a time
15:54 when they had had some arguments,
15:55 and he left the house.
15:56 And during that time,
15:58 he spent some time with other women.
16:00 He, of course, is not a Christian
16:01 and contracted HIV, brought it back to her,
16:05 and subsequently, she was diagnosed.
16:08 When I went to see her, he had wasted away.
16:12 They called it AIDS wasting.
16:14 In their early days, when they didn't know quite
16:15 how to treat disease, this happened a lot.
16:17 He was down to maybe 100 pounds.
16:19 He's a pretty good-sized man. Wow.
16:21 And had, as I counted,
16:22 I think about 20 different medications
16:24 because they were just trying things.
16:26 They didn't really know back in the 80s
16:27 what they were dealing with.
16:28 Well, she was there,
16:30 and that's when she told me that,
16:33 "I'm HIV positive."
16:36 And she wasn't angry, she was not upset,
16:39 she seems so calm in the Lord.
16:43 She said, "Pastor, I'm okay. I'm fine.
16:45 I trust the Lord. I love the Lord.
16:48 I've given my vows to this man.
16:51 He is sorry for what has happened.
16:53 He is paying for his sins.
16:55 I'm going to take care of him," which just blew me away,
16:57 I mean that kind of thing.
16:59 Yeah, that's huge.
17:00 Yeah, she said...
17:01 And I mean, she had to feed him,
17:03 she had to clean him, she had to diaper him,
17:05 she had to give him his medications.
17:07 She said, "The only thing I'm asking, Lord,
17:08 is I don't want that.
17:10 I don't want to end up like that."
17:12 She said, "I'm okay. I'm fine. I trust in the Lord."
17:15 And she was really just blowing me away
17:17 because her faith was so strong
17:19 and her stability was so strong,
17:20 she said, "I just don't want to be like that."
17:24 And we prayed together.
17:25 I remember going out to the car,
17:26 and I'm not a crier, but I cried in the car.
17:30 First of all, her faith was just overwhelming,
17:33 and her love for the Lord, and her statement,
17:36 "That's okay, you know, it's okay,
17:38 I know if I'm faithful, I'll have that."
17:40 So she was taking care of him.
17:41 Well, I got word, I had gone away for something.
17:44 I got word that she had gone into the hospital not knowing
17:47 how AIDS was,
17:50 usually on several hospital visits,
17:51 you know, you go in, you come out,
17:52 you go in, you come out.
17:54 So it didn't occur to me to rush back
17:56 because it was her first time in the hospital.
17:58 Well, when I got back, she was still there,
18:01 and right after that, she died.
18:04 And then talking with the doctor,
18:08 he said to me,
18:09 "I don't know why this woman is dead.
18:11 There is nothing wrong with her."
18:12 When he says that
18:13 there was no particular disease,
18:15 her T-cell count was off.
18:16 And, you know, but he said that,
18:18 "She's not sick enough to be dead.
18:20 I don't really understand."
18:22 And I told that doctor that was her wish.
18:26 So she went in a hospital, she closed her eyes,
18:29 she peacefully went to sleep.
18:30 Her husband lasted maybe six
18:32 or eight months longer wasting away,
18:34 you know, but she just went to sleep in the Lord.
18:36 So I've seen in New York City some great examples of faith,
18:40 great, great examples of faith of young people,
18:43 young and old,
18:45 who really locked in on the Lord.
18:49 You know, that kind of thing.
18:52 Many, many examples of people who gave up lifestyles.
18:57 When I was telling you before, there was a young man,
19:00 a deacon at my church
19:02 whose sister was caught in prostitution.
19:03 She was living in a house of prostitution,
19:05 and she called him and said, "I want to get out."
19:08 And so he came to me now, 30, 40 years later,
19:11 I probably wouldn't do this,
19:13 but back then we had to get this girl out, you know.
19:16 And so we dressed up like ninjas, you know.
19:19 We put on black clothes, black shoes, black sneakers,
19:21 you know.
19:23 Back in the day, when everybody was wearing Converse All-Stars,
19:26 you know, black sneakers, black hat,
19:28 you know, black, you know, kind of thing.
19:30 And she said, "I'll leave the back door unlocked."
19:33 And we tried the back door of the house
19:35 and, you know, dogs are barking.
19:37 We were getting kind of scared. So she couldn't come out.
19:41 So she appeared at the window, and she said,
19:43 "I'm going to jump."
19:44 You know, I was like, "Okay, we'll catch you."
19:46 Wow. She's on the second floor.
19:47 Second floor?
19:49 She hang jumped, you know, you hold off all you can.
19:51 So she didn't fall that far,
19:52 but luckily, she was not a big girl,
19:54 but we kind of joined our hands together.
19:56 She jumped, and we caught her,
19:57 and we really ran away with her, you know.
19:59 And then she went and stayed with her aunt for a while
20:02 till the heat got off, you know.
20:03 But I don't know
20:05 if I would do that at this point in my life.
20:06 Yeah, a lot more people have guns in their houses.
20:08 Precisely, yeah, yeah.
20:10 We could have gotten some trouble,
20:11 but back then when you're in your 20s,
20:13 you figure you're invincible.
20:14 You try that kind of stuff, you know.
20:16 Yes, yes. It was a blessing.
20:17 Wow.
20:19 Now you have a couple testimonies
20:20 of your own in your own life.
20:23 Tell us about the school you went to early on.
20:28 PS 71, 1st grade through 6.
20:33 I've always had poor eyesight, and the doctors are telling me
20:36 that I will probably go blind again
20:38 before this is all over.
20:40 And I told that to Irma when we started dating.
20:42 So I said, "You'd probably pushing me around
20:43 in a wheelchair or something."
20:46 But I started out with poor sight,
20:48 and then I went to first grade,
20:51 and we repeated first grade at blind school.
20:56 My sight had deteriorated.
20:57 They had to take me out of public school
20:59 and put me in school
21:01 for the nearsighted and totally blind.
21:05 You had to be a legally blind to be admitted to that school.
21:08 So we did the Braille thing.
21:09 I was trying to read Braille just the other day,
21:11 you know, you lose a touch in your fingers and, you know.
21:14 When you want to be mainline so badly,
21:16 I purposely never touched
21:17 a Braille book for years and years.
21:19 Now I found out I cannot do it,
21:20 you know, just I don't have that ability anymore.
21:23 But from first grade, first,
21:24 second, third, fourth, fifth, six,
21:27 I think I went back to public school
21:28 in the sixth grade,
21:30 almost as mysteriously as my eyes deteriorated,
21:32 they came back.
21:33 But they never came back fully.
21:35 So I wore glasses up until, contact lenses even though,
21:38 then contact lenses,
21:40 and then I had to get cataracts...
21:41 I have had 11 or so surgeries on my eyes over the years.
21:46 Wow.
21:48 I've had four since being at 3ABN,
21:49 five since being at 3ABN, including one just last month.
21:53 So it's something that is inevitable,
21:56 and I'm at peace with it.
21:57 I've been blind before, so I guess I can make it.
22:00 What was it like,
22:02 that initial shock factor, like,
22:04 when you couldn't see?
22:10 It deteriorated slowly, and when you're five,
22:15 you just kind of roll with it, you know.
22:17 I don't remember any particular sense of horror.
22:20 Now when I was pastoring the Springfield Gardens Church,
22:25 I was holding a meeting,
22:27 and in the middle of that meeting,
22:28 I went blind again.
22:31 I woke up Sunday morning
22:32 that I was going to preach Sabbath
22:35 and couldn't see
22:37 and had to call my next-door neighbor,
22:38 just yell at them and asked them to take me
22:40 to the emergency room
22:42 'cause I literally couldn't see.
22:44 And that's how I got to meet the eye doctor
22:47 that I had for 25 years, Dr. Michael J. Lieberman,
22:50 who was a Jewish eye doctor.
22:51 Uh-huh.
22:52 And the reason he was practicing on Sundays is
22:54 'cause he was closed on Saturday.
22:55 He is the only one in Long Island, New York,
22:57 that was there, and we became great friends,
23:00 had some great studies on Daniel
23:01 and some great debates 'cause his father was a rabbi.
23:03 Okay.
23:05 And over the years, when he was dilating my eyes,
23:06 and I had to sit still and quiet,
23:07 we'd go back and forth,
23:09 you know, 'cause he liked the idea,
23:10 we kept Sabbath, we didn't eat pork,
23:12 so we had this natural simpatico.
23:13 So we'd have some great debates,
23:14 you know, over for 25 years, a nice fellow.
23:17 And he took care of me
23:19 while I was in New York the whole time.
23:23 You've also had open-heart surgery too.
23:25 Oh, yeah.
23:26 We've had open-heart surgery,
23:29 six bypasses, the doctor said,
23:32 "You know, you're a fortunate fellow.
23:34 We don't usually get many sixes in here,
23:36 and they usually walk in.
23:37 I walked in and walked out." Yeah, praise the Lord for that.
23:41 We came and visited you in the hospital.
23:42 Indeed. Yeah, that was tough.
23:45 And you had so much faith,
23:47 you know, I remember asking you like,
23:50 "Are you nervous?
23:51 Are you scared? Are you worried?"
23:53 You said, "You know, I've got faith.
23:56 You know, I tell other people they got to have faith.
23:59 I believe in it, I got faith."
24:00 Yeah, you got to buy what you sell, man.
24:02 You got to buy.
24:04 Bradford, Elder Bradford, used to say,
24:05 "You know, you got to write checks, man,
24:07 you put all this money in a bank,
24:09 then sometimes you got to cash some stuff,
24:11 you know, you're going to write
24:12 some checks, just call on the Lord,
24:13 write a check, He'll cash it.
24:15 You can overdraw."
24:16 I want to shift gears a little bit.
24:17 We've got a short amount of time left,
24:20 roughly like three minutes,
24:22 but I want to talk about your tenure here at 3ABN
24:26 and some of the things
24:28 that you've experienced and lessons
24:29 that you've learned here at 3ABN.
24:32 I think one of the things I can say is that people
24:36 are more important than things.
24:39 The one thing that you notice at 3ABN is that
24:44 there are a group of people
24:45 who are hyper focused on mission.
24:47 The reason this ministry has been around so long
24:50 and enjoyed the kind of success,
24:52 and I use that term advisedly,
24:54 is because people are focused on mission.
24:57 This is not a perfect place
24:59 because there are no perfect places on earth.
25:01 Yet, there are a group of people here
25:04 who honestly try, and I think, succeed in serving the Lord.
25:07 And when they step on each other's toes,
25:10 as inevitably we will do
25:11 because television is so hypercritical
25:14 as far as time is concerned, they generally say,
25:17 "I'm sorry," and mean it.
25:19 You don't have people looking out
25:21 to tear other people down,
25:22 you don't have to look over your shoulder
25:24 where somebody's trying to catch up to you
25:25 and take your job.
25:26 You're free from that kind of thing
25:28 because you have people who really buy what they sell.
25:31 They really believe in serving the Lord
25:33 and they try to live lives worthy
25:35 of that calling.
25:39 For somebody who wants to get into ministry,
25:43 what advice would you have for them?
25:45 Take enough time to make sure
25:47 that you are in the calling of the Lord.
25:49 There are a lot of people who self-call.
25:52 There are a lot of people who burn out,
25:54 there are a lot of people who take their selves out
25:55 of the hands of the Lord
25:57 and try to run the engine by themselves.
26:00 Follow the Lord as opposed to leading Him.
26:04 Listen to what He has to say as opposed to telling Him
26:07 what you want from Him.
26:10 Test your call.
26:12 If the Lord wants you in ministry,
26:14 He will make it loud enough for you
26:16 to hear and understand.
26:18 And if you're a little hard of hearing, like Kevin was,
26:20 He will amplify His voice
26:23 until you hear what He wants you to do.
26:25 There are some who are not in ministry
26:27 who should be there.
26:28 There are many who are in ministry
26:29 who really have no business being there.
26:31 Make sure you're following the call of the Lord.
26:34 Pray about it, take good counsel from people
26:36 that you know know the Lord,
26:38 and then walk as far and as fast
26:41 as He will lead you, and you'll have success.
26:45 Amen.
26:46 How do you prepare your sermons ever so quickly?
26:49 We got like a short amount of time.
26:51 This is a power-packed question,
26:53 but very fast,
26:55 how do you prepare your sermons?
26:57 The best I can with my limited abilities,
26:59 I can't really tell...
27:00 We've got like a minute left, I mean, you can...
27:03 I don't know, I'm an inductive preacher.
27:05 Okay.
27:06 Which means, basically,
27:09 I put the ingredients together and say this is a pie.
27:13 There are some preachers who say,
27:14 "This is a pie, here is how we made it."
27:16 I'm the reverse.
27:18 I am, "Here's sugar, here's dough,
27:21 here is flour, here's...
27:23 Know what that is? That's a pie."
27:24 Now you may not mention
27:25 the word pie till 10 minutes down,
27:27 but you're gathering your ingredients,
27:29 and that's just...
27:31 Doing inductive preaching
27:32 is a little more comfortable for me
27:34 as opposed to deductive preaching.
27:36 That's pretty much all I can tell you.
27:38 Wow.
27:39 Well, one thing that I like about your sermons too
27:40 is like you incorporate a lot of your vocabulary,
27:44 basically, is impressive
27:47 because you look up these words,
27:49 then you talk about those words in the Greek,
27:51 and then the Hebrew,
27:53 and it's always teaching me something new.
27:54 Well, praise the Lord.
27:56 Our time has escaped us,
27:57 but I thank you for being with us.
27:59 And I want to thank you for joining us.
28:01 Join us next time, and remember,
28:02 it just wouldn't be the same without you.


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Revised 2018-08-02