August 14th would have marked Derek Prince's birthday (1915–2003). How did this well-educated man, philosopher and self-proclaimed agnostic, become one of the world’s leading Bible teachers?
Derek Prince was born in India of British parents. He was educated as a scholar of Greek and Latin at Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge, in England. Upon graduation, he held a Fellowship (equivalent to a professorship) in Ancient and Modern Philosophy at King’s College. Prince also studied Hebrew, Aramaic, and modern languages at Cambridge and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. As a student, he was a philosopher and a self-proclaimed agnostic.
In his booklet, Pages From My Life’s Book, Derek Prince describes his deeply personal story. While serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) during World War II, Prince began to study the Bible as a philosophical work. Converted through a powerful encounter with Jesus Christ, he was baptized in the Holy Spirit a few days later.
The Importance of Personal Testimony
The personal experiences in my walk with God have built my faith and shaped my life’s destiny. Before I relate any personal experiences, I would like to establish one basic principle of Scripture: God expects us, as Christians, to share our personal testimony with those around us.
Acts 1:8 is the final words Jesus spoke to His disciples as He was standing with them on the Mount of Olives, before He was taken up again to heaven. I always feel there is a special significance in the last words a man speaks to those who have been very close to him, knowing that he is not going to meet them again the same way. Because of this, I have always attached great importance to these final words of Jesus:
“ . . . but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” (NAS)
It is significant, I believe, that the last words that fell from the lips of Jesus on earth were, “the remotest part of the earth.” I believe Jesus had in mind that this testimony of Him and His gospel should be carried to every nation, every people, every tribe, every tongue, all races everywhere, everyone who lives on the face of the earth.
His mind was fixed on this as He left His disciples, and He gave a very simple, two-stage process by which this task could be carried out. First, every believer needs to be personally empowered by the Holy Spirit. This is very practical. The message that we must carry as Christians is a supernatural message. It centers on supernatural events – the death and resurrection of Jesus – and it needs a supernatural power to make it real and vivid to those to whom we speak. The supernatural power that God has ordained and made available is the power of the Holy Spirit.
"The message that we must carry as Christians is a supernatural message"
The second step is that each believer tells others what God has done for him or her. This process is perpetual. Each believer who hears and believes, is in turn empowered by the Holy Spirit and tells others; those others, in turn, as they believe, are empowered by the Holy Spirit and go on to tell others. In this way, if we are faithful, the testimony of Jesus and the message of the Gospel can indeed be carried to “the remotest part of the earth.” We must make a very important distinction between witnessing and preaching. Preaching is proclaiming the truth of Scripture. It is a ministry God gives particularly to some of His servants. Witnessing, however, is different. Witnessing is talking in a personal way about our own experience. It is telling others what God has done in our lives. Even though not all Christians are called to preach, all true Christians should be witnesses.
"Even though not all Christians are called to preach, all true Christians should be witnesses"
In Jesus, I finally resolved that awful conflict that had troubled me for so many years between the ideal and the actual. In Jesus, I discovered that the ideal is the actual. His life, words, and teaching, but above all, His person – they were the answer to that unsatisfied craving that had driven me for so many years. Tremendous changes immediately took place in my life as a result of meeting Jesus.
Life-Changing Encounter
I would like to describe these changes in an objective way, as far as possible. First, I have never been able to doubt since that time that Jesus is alive. I might be tempted to disobey Him or be disloyal to Him, but I absolutely cannot doubt that Jesus is alive. From that moment until now, this has been the most important single fact in my life: that Jesus of Nazareth, the One who hung on a cross, was buried in a stone tomb and rose from the dead, is alive, and I know Him. This is not the result of reasoning. It is not the result of study. It is not the result of ministerial training. It is the result of an encounter. I met Him; He met me. I know Him. Every day I know Him. Every hour I am conscious of His presence.
Second, prayer became as natural to me as breathing. The night I tried to pray, I did not know how to pray, what words to say, or to whom to pray. The next day, as I went about my ordinary military duties, I discovered that I was praying all the time. I made no effort, instead each breath was a prayer. I remember going to a tap to draw some water to drink. Normally, that would have been a very ordinary thing to do and I would have attached no importance to it, but I just could not drink that water until I had thanked God for it. It seemed so natural to talk to God and thank Him. I had always thought of prayer as something that you had to do in a religious building and in a religious type of attitude. I now discovered that prayer is communicating with God, and since the Holy Spirit came into me it was easy and natural for me to communicate with God. This communication with God gave me a source of inner strength. No matter what was going on around me, I had an inner communication with God that continued all the time I was awake.
Third, the Bible suddenly became a meaningful book. I had been reading it for nine months trying to make sense of it. I had read from the beginning of Genesis to the middle of the book of Job. I had made quite a lot of progress as far as reading was concerned but I could not classify the book or understand it. After I met Jesus and the Holy Spirit had come into my life, there was a total, immediate change in my relationship to the Bible. This was not gradual, nor was it the result of a process. It did not come from an intellectual struggle, but it came from this new relationship.
Knowing God Personally
As I completed this study, my whole image of God underwent a radical change. I had grown up with a kind of boyish image of God (if I can say this reverently) as a rather irritable old man with a long beard, who lived a long way off in an office somewhere. If you were in trouble, you were required to go to His office. I pictured Him as a grumpy, unreasonable school master. Now, however, through hearing what God was saying to me through the Bible and focusing my attention on it, my picture of God changed. I saw God as a loving Father. I saw Him as one who planned the best. I saw that if I could commit my life to Him without reservation, He would arrange everything for the best. He loved me, He cared for me, He had made provision for me and wanted the best for me. My whole religious background fell away from me. I had always had the impression that if you were going to be a Christian, you must prepare to be miserable. I think it went back to those words I heard so many times in the Anglican Church service, “Pardon us miserable offenders.” Somehow, it made a deep impact on me that Christians were miserable people and that God was a harsh, stern, unreasonable God. That image changed and I saw God as loving and wise, gracious and kind, and able to provide for His people and to keep them in every situation and circumstance.
