Privileged to Sit in Their Shadow | Christopher Alam

Connect with Evangelist Christopher Alam: www.pentecostalfire.com

Transcript: 

Evangelist Daniel King (00:00):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. Today I have a very special guest with me, Evangelist Christopher Alam. We are in the nation of Mozambique. We have been doing a crusade all week long in the city of Gorangoza.

(00:25):
It has been so beautiful. Jesus has done many great miracles. And so thank you for being on the Evangelism Podcast.

Christopher Alam (00:32):
Yes, I’m really honored to be here with you.

Evangelist Daniel King (00:35):
All right. Well, let’s begin with your testimony. Tell me a little bit, Brother Christopher, about how you came to know Jesus.

Christopher Alam (00:45):
Well, I grew up as a Muslim and in an environment that was totally Muslim. And I had never seen a Bible, never met a Christian. And the only thing I knew about Jesus was what Muslims believed, that he was some kind of prophet. That was it. So because of circumstances in my life, I was suicidal. I was really messed up. And then when I was 21 years of age, somebody told me about Jesus and I gave my life to Jesus. And three days later, God called me to preach the gospel. I heard an audible voice and I decided to leave everything. So I was actually brought to the Lord by the Jesus people. And they were very, very radical. And their thing was forsake everything, take up your cross and follow Jesus. The

Evangelist Daniel King (01:41):
Way it should be.

Christopher Alam (01:42):
Yes. None of the modern day stuff. So I decided to do that. I left everything and I began to follow Jesus. And I was first put in a mental hospital because there was such a change in me that they though I had been brainwashed or I was on drugs or something. And then I was out of mental hospital and then I was out on the streets preaching, witnessing, sharing my faith with others. Then I was arrested for preaching the gospel and I was in prison for almost a year. And I came out of prison, then they threatened me. I was arrested one more time for owning a Bible. Wow. And they said that if I didn’t stop this thing with Jesus, I would be executed. And so I decided to leave. So I escaped and I went to Afghanistan. I went to Russia. I went to Turkey, Belgium.

(02:38):
And then I ended up in Turkey and in Belgium. And in Belgium I was with Operation Mobilization and that had a great impact on my life doing evangelism on the streets. Then I got a scholarship to go to Cape Rey Bible School in Sweden. So I went to Sweden and when I was in Sweden, I received news that the American missionary who had baptized me had been killed by the fundamentalists. And I was told by another missionary, a US missionary who was his overseer who told me to apply for political asylum in Sweden, which I did.

Evangelist Daniel King (03:14):
Wow.

Christopher Alam (03:14):
And

Evangelist Daniel King (03:14):
So he was killed actually for baptizing you

Christopher Alam (03:18):
By the fundamentalists.

Evangelist Daniel King (03:19):
Wow.

Christopher Alam (03:20):
And then I was granted political asylum and I lived in Sweden for many, many, many years. I met my wife in church and we continued on in ministry. I was baptized with the Holy Spirit. And then I went to Rhema, came back from Rhema and continued with ministry. And I had this calling in my heart to go overseas and preach the gospel. So my first trip was to Poland and this was behind the Iron Curtain, which was a very unusual situation to go into where this tough communism, there was a communist military dictatorship in Poland. And in spite of that, I preached the gospel and God gave us great fruit during those years. Wow. Then I went to India, then I went to Argentina and God began to open doors for me all over the world. I also taught full time at the biggest Bible school in Europe at that time.

(04:24):
So I did that too. And then we came to Rhema and went back to Sweden, continued ministry. And then after that, there came a time we moved to the US. And the US, I felt the best thing for me would be to join the Assemblies of God. So I’ve been with the AG for about 20 years.

Evangelist Daniel King (04:47):
And they recently gave you an award?

Christopher Alam (04:50):
Yeah. It’s the Smith Wigglesworth Award. You

Evangelist Daniel King (04:52):
Got the Smith Wigglesworth Award.

Christopher Alam (04:54):
Yes.

Evangelist Daniel King (04:54):
Congratulations.

Christopher Alam (04:55):
Thank you. Thank you.

Evangelist Daniel King (04:57):
And one of the neat things about being here in Mozambique has been meeting your team. You have a missions base in Zimbabwe

Christopher Alam (05:08):
Where

Evangelist Daniel King (05:08):
You have a truck and a sound system and a generator and the team goes out from the missions base and you’re doing over the years, you’ve been doing eight to 10 crusades every single year across this entire part of Africa. So tell me a little bit about all these campaigns you’ve done.

Christopher Alam (05:32):
So we do eight to 10 crusades a year and I’ve been doing this for next year will be my 40th year in Africa, 39 years. And so we have developed our own program and what that is to, I’ll explain to you concisely that first we make contact with the pastors in a town that we are targeting and then we have a pre-crusade training program. Now firstly, I don’t go to the big city venues like renting a stadium to do a citywide crusade because what happens normally in these countries, the stadiums are located outside the city center and nobody actually lives there. So you have to rent all the city buses and bus people in to the crusade. And once you begin to bus people in, you’ll find out that almost everybody who comes on those buses are Christians from churches. I don’t think sinners would get on a bus to go 45 minutes to a crusade.

(06:36):
So we decided to avoid all that. So what we decided is instead of doing the big city venues, we decided to go to the townships because Southern Africa is constructed in such a way of the city center where very few people live. But then you have the townships, you can have 100,000, 200,000, 300,000, 400,000 people and they go into the city for work, but they live in the township. So we decided we’ll work in the townships because once you do that, it’s easy for the pastors to follow because they know who these people are. They’re from the township. So we target townships and we always do two crusades back to back and we choose two places that are within 100 kilometers of each other, which is easier for us to prepare. So we have a pre-crusade training program. It’s three weeks. It used to be five weeks, but times have changed and people can’t hold their attention for that long.

(07:35):
So we have brought it down to three weeks. So during these three weeks, we asked the participating churches to suspend all their programs except a Sunday morning service so we can take over and work with them six days a week. And doing the six days a week for three weeks, we run a mobile Bible school and we train hundreds of people. And

Evangelist Daniel King (07:56):
So people are trained before the crusade ever begins

Christopher Alam (08:00):
In

Evangelist Daniel King (08:00):
The mobile Bible

Christopher Alam (08:02):
School.

Evangelist Daniel King (08:03):
And what subjects are you teaching

Christopher Alam (08:05):
Them? Well, we teach them subjects like faith, prayer, how to pray for the sake, how to share your testimony, how to lead someone to Jesus. And it depends upon the. It’s tailor made to meet the needs, the local needs. Some places we go to, there’s a lot of single parents and we help them, teach them that. Then we teach them on biblical finances about giving and all that. These are smaller subjects, but we also do youth rallies and women’s meetings and all that, pastor’s meetings. But the main thing is we teach them how to disciple new believers using a booklet that I have written. That booklet is called First Steps with Jesus. It’s got 15 one page lessons and it begins with the assurance of salvation and about water baptism, baptism with the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, prayer, reading the Bible every day, why it is important to belong to a local assembly, about tithing and giving, about forgiving others, about sharing a faith with others.

(09:18):
So we’ve got 15 of the fundamental tenets that are taught. So we teach them and we teach them how to use the booklet to disciple new believers. So then during the crusade after the altar call, one of my guys will do a teaching and you have seen that every night. It’s called Four Steps to Victory. Read the Bible every day, that’s the first step. Secondly, talk to Jesus every day. Thirdly, share your faith with others. Tell others about Jesus. And fourthly is go to a good church where you can be nurtured and fed. And that we dovetail with the next thing, which is now if you don’t know of a good church, you don’t have any Christian friends who can help you, then we want your names and addresses. So what happens instead of taking the names and addresses of everybody who responds to the altar call, which can be thousands, so we can end up with a thousand cards.

(10:21):
And if we have had a good week, we have maybe 150. Sometimes it has gone up to 300 people who we have been able to train in the mobile Bible school, but generally it’s about 150, 200. So you do the maths. If I have 30,000 decision cards, I can’t give it to 150 people and expect them to visit all of them in their homes. So what we do, we did a survey many years ago and we found out that about 84% of the people are brought there, have already a Christian friend and relatives. Someone’s brother, someone’s cousin, someone’s workmate, someone’s neighbor has brought them in. And so what we do, our follow-up program is set in such a way that we look at the town, we look at the map and divide it into grids. So the number of decision cards each church gets after the crusade depends upon two factors.

(11:20):
Firstly is how many workers have they provided who have attended the mobile Bible school? So the church that has sent more people to be trained will get more decision cards. Secondly, which is the church that is closest to the person who’s been saved? So we will give his card to them. But sometimes we realize that would backfire because say a guy’s cousin brought him to the crusade and he lives on the other side of town and we tried to hook this fellow up with this church, so it causes problems. So we assumed, and it has worked. I mean, it’s wrong to assume, but it works that if he cared enough to bring his brother or cousin to the crusade, he would care enough to take him to church next Sunday. So that’s why we go after the unchurched because then we could end up with a more manageable figure than an astronomical figure, which is.

(12:20):
I mean, what’s the point in having thousands of decision cards and saying, “Hey, we had so many cards when we can’t really follow them up.” So we get a more manageable number of cards and they’re the ones who are followed up. They visit, their homes are visited. And when the homes are visited, we often find out that the whole family gets saved. Then you got curious neighbors and relatives who show up and they also get saved. We found out that 90% of those people end up in the churches.

(12:50):
Wow. 5% say we find out our erranous addresses, 5% said they’re no longer interested, but 90% we find out that if you visit their home and teach them out of that book, now you’re a child of God, assurance of salvation and you pray for that family, pray for their needs, 90% of them will end up in the church. Wow. So we found that out. The other thing is that we teach the pastors how to gear up their Sunday services the first three Sundays after the crusade to make room for the new believers, welcome them, let them come up and share their story, their testimony. Some of them were healed during the crusade. Someone had a life changing experiences. So these new believers feel welcome. So because of that, the churches grew. But then we realized there was an added benefit that we hadn’t really thought of.

(13:48):
And that was that through the mobile Bible school, we were leaving in each church a pool of trained people who could strengthen the arms of the pastor and so that the churches could do their own outreach and reach people. So we had to create this system ourselves and it has worked for us. Of course, things can always be tweaked and made better. So we are always looking at how we can make things better. So that is the mobile Bible school. And today, I have been so spoiled by this. I refuse to do a crusade without pre-crusade training.

Evangelist Daniel King (14:27):
Yeah. And plus you’re leaving a deposit in the church. You’re helping to train the local believers and that fruit continues long after the crusade is over.

Christopher Alam (14:38):
Yeah. So I always say this may sound extreme, that an evangelist shouldn’t just think of the crusade. He has to be, how do you say, not a church planter, but you know what I mean? One who helps grow the church. One of the things about us who are parachurch ministries is to strengthen the pastors and the local churches because that speaks also the best of our ministry and that’s the best endorsement we can get because it’s like this. I do this allegory that if I’m going to sell cars in a country like Mozambique and rural Mozambique, so I have to think, okay, there are no gas stations here. Maybe I should get into the gas station business and start having gas stations and maybe roads need to be constructed. So as a result, our ministry expands. And so we are no longer purely evangelistic, but it’s more of an apostolic bend to our ministries because in addition to holding the crusades, we start with crusades, but we end up training leaders and we end up training other evangelists and we end up strengthening churches.

(15:49):
So that’s what I mean by apostolic, not that we’re apostles, but we have that bent to our ministries.

Evangelist Daniel King (15:55):
And over the years, many of the people that you have trained have gone on to plant churches

Christopher Alam (16:00):
And

Evangelist Daniel King (16:00):
Now have very large churches.

Christopher Alam (16:02):
Yeah. We have seen over the years, I stopped counting at 2000, but I used to keep count. So over 2,000 churches were started as a direct fruit of our ministry. But then you realize once you reach 2,000, it’s only numbers. It’s academic. So we stopped counting. But the one thing I do look for everywhere I go, there’s always people who come to me and say, “Pastor, I got saved in a crusade in somewhere 20, 25 years ago. And now I’m a church planter. I planted five churches or I’m a pastor or I’m the president of a Bible college.” We’ve seen, but that kind of fruit normally takes 15, 20 years before you begin to see that.

Evangelist Daniel King (16:49):
Yeah. Well, I really honor you for your faithfulness and it’s beautiful to see what God can accomplish if you’ll just stay faithful over a long period.

Christopher Alam (17:00):
Amen. And

Evangelist Daniel King (17:00):
So over all these years of ministry, you have been able to be friends and to learn from some spiritual giants. Talk to us about some of the lessons you’ve learned from these great men and women of God that you’ve known.

Christopher Alam (17:19):
When I first started and I would go to conferences and meetings and I would see this great men of God and people used to say, “Oh, he laid hands on me, prophesied over me.” And nobody ever prophesied over me. I had to kind of follow God’s calling and make my own way. But then over the years, God caused my paths to converge with some of these great men of God and they have spoken into my life. And I should say of all the great men of God, I met the first one who I really got to know, who had an impact on me was Brother George Werwer. George Werwer was the founder of Operation Mobilization. And he had

Evangelist Daniel King (18:04):
A great passion for missions.

Christopher Alam (18:05):
Oh my goodness. He was a pure fanatic. He used to preach to us, and if I would paraphrase what he said, “If you’re not willing to lay down your life for Jesus, you’re throwing your life away. You’re useless. You’re wasting this life God has given you. This life is precious. Give it to God. Let him use it instead of engage in the trivial pursuits of this world.” So he really challenged me. And I remember there was a book called The Calvary Road written by a man called Roy Heshen. Then he wrote a book. George wrote a book called Come, Live and Die that totally wrecked me. It was about you have one life to live, live it for Jesus, lay it down for Jesus. And he was all about missions, all about. In fact, he died a few years ago. I was close to him.

(18:52):
I used to talk to him on the phone. And when he was dying, a couple of days before he died of cancer, he actually wrote to us and said, “Please don’t pray for my healing because I feel like I’ve lived a long life. I’ve been everywhere. I’ve done and I’m done. I just want to go home.” And I respect that. But when he was in his deathbed, I think a couple of days before he died, he made a video that he sent to all of us. And I got there and he was laying on his bed and he was very frail, very weak. And what touched me was that he basically challenged us. He says, “Don’t forget.” He said, “I’m going, but don’t you forget the hundreds of millions who still have not heard the gospel.” And I thought some people teach us to live, other people teach us to die.

(19:52):
And George taught us to die in faith that even when he died, he though of the millions who still had not heard about Jesus. And I though to myself, Lord, when it’s time for me to go, I don’t want to be caught up in thinking of my things, that kind of thing. But he had cancer, he had great pain, but in spite of his privations, his sufferings, he was focused on the task and he encouraged all of us who were OMers in Operation Mobilization to don’t forget that there’s hundreds of millions who still have not heard about Jesus.

Evangelist Daniel King (20:29):
Tell me about the story of the man who had mentored T.L. Osborne and that you knew when he was an older.

Christopher Alam (20:38):
So years ago, actually when I was at Rayma and we had Brother Jerry O’Dell, he came in as missions director and he told me, “If you ever go to India…” No, I was in Sweden and he wrote to me. I corresponded with him. This was before Facebook, just emails. And he said to me, he said, “Brother Christopher…” No, I told him I was going to go to India. He said, “India, can you go to Bangalore and meet the brother Harold Groves? Harold Groves. Harold Groves.” I said, “Okay.” So I thought could be an Anglo-Indian because there’s Indians who have such names, Anglo Indians. So I called him. I said, “Brother Groves, I’m Jerry O’Dell’s student and can I come and see you?” He said, “Sure.” So I told him, gave my flight number. So I took one of my students on the Bible college where I was teaching.

(21:33):
I took him with me. So we flew into Bangalore and I was at the airport looking for Harold Groves and there was no one. When everyone had gone, I saw this really, really old gentleman in his 90s standing there. He came up to me and he said, “Are you Brother Christopher Alam?” “Yes, sir. “He said,” I’m Harold Groves, proper Englishman. “So he drove me to his home and we stayed there. And then while we were talking, turned out he had been to Howard Carter’s Bible School. Wow. And he knew Smith Wigglesworth. He knew the Bosworth brothers. I didn’t know F.F. Bosworth had a brother, but he said,” Oh, the Bosworth brother. “Then he talk about someone called. He had mentored someone called Tommy Lee. And I said,” Who’s Tommy Le? “He said,” Well, you know him as T.L. Osborne, but for me, he’s Tommy Lee.

(22:23):
“He

Evangelist Daniel King (22:24):
Knew him before the initials came.

Christopher Alam (22:26):
Right. So he knew all this great men of God. Wow.

(22:29):
And he would preach to me, and he would tell me things like. He had these certain things he would say all the time. And one was,” You cannot see the power of God until you’re willing to pay the price. “Then he would say,” The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force. “What he meant, we have to be aggressive in our faith and take souls and miracles or whatever it is. So he did that and he said,” You sat under Reverend Hagen and learned about faith. Hes in the 20s, 30s, we used to live faith. That was our life. “And so anyway, so he told me amazing stories. So then one day. And I was a great Wigglesworts fan. I wanted to know more and more, and he was telling me all these stories you will never read in the books.

(23:23):
So suddenly he got kind of testy and irritated. He says,” Just go and get some rest. Take a nap. I’ll see you at tea at three o’clock. “So three o’clock, a man knocked on our door. He said,” The pastor wants to see you. “We went there for tea and he looked at me, he says,” You were asking me for stories about Wigglesworth and all these others. “He said,” You know what? One thing about Smith Wigglesworth, when he was alive, not many people liked him because he was gruff. He was very forthright. He was very blunt. People didn’t like that. “He says,” After he died that people began to appreciate him and talk about him, and that’s what you know. But he said, “But here’s the bottom line. Wigglesworth is dead. All those of that time, they’re all gone. They’re all with the Lord.” Then he said, “And soon I’ll be going upstairs,” because he was like 90 years old, 89 or 90 years old.

(24:20):
He says, “But the question now is, what are you going to do with your life? Are you going to listen to stories and read stories or are you going to serve God like these people serve God?” He said, “As I was in my bed, I was meditating on the word and the Lord brought this word to me that the glory of the latter house shall be greater than the glory of the former.

(24:47):
And that is about your generation. What are you going to do?” And so I was so convicted. So I went on my knees and I said, “Brother Groves, would you lay hands on me?” He said, “Why should I lay hands on you?” I said, Brother Gross, because you’re like an apostle and you carry something. “And he began to weep. He said,” I’m not an apostle. I’m just this ordinary guy trying to serve Jesus. “I said,” I know that, Brother Gross, please lay hands on me. “And he laid hands on me and he blessed me and blessed me and blessed me and blessed me. I can’t describe to you, but I remember when I got up, it was like I was a new person. It was a totally. I knew that I carried something from that moment. God touched me at that time. So that was Brother Groves.

(25:37):
And then years later when I was in Burma and my first crusade, there was a man who died in that. I think I told the story when I was in Joburg. He died in the crusade. They dragged his body, put him in front of me, and I didn’t know what to do. I was saying, Lord, what should I do? Because at Rhema, they didn’t teach me how to raise dead people. I have no –

Evangelist Daniel King (26:00):
You missed the raising dead people class.

Christopher Alam (26:01):
Right. I didn’t know how. I’d never seen it being done. I just read about it in the Bible. And then suddenly I saw Brother Groves face in front of me. And Brother Groves, one day, he pulled his chair up right in front of me and he sat in front of me, six inches away, and he put his finger in front of my nose. He said,” Remember, brother, when you don’t know what to do, the Holy Ghost always knows. “Suddenly, I see Brother Groves. I could see his face and his finger wagging on my nose, and I knew the Holy Ghost always knows. So I began to speak in tongues, and I shouted in tongues for a long, long, long time until this man was raised up from the dead. So that was my experience with Brother Groves. There’s a saying in the Middle

Evangelist Daniel King (26:57):
East. You prayed in tongues and the man came back to life.

Christopher Alam (27:00):
Man came back to life. He rose up from the dead. And that was the beginning. I went to Burma, we preached all over the country. I saw in the subsequent years, I saw during the military dictatorship, I saw at least four people raised from the dead. Wow. And we saw blind, deaf, crippled people healed. I think we planted 178 churches in unchurched, unreached areas. When I think of Brother Groves and I think of the saying in the Middle East that you look at this old man and they’re like the big old oak trees or bunyan trees, they’re huge trees. I put it this way. I said, “I am blessed that I could sit in the shadow of these great trees.” I’m thinking of Brother Groves, I’m thinking of Brother Hagen. I’m thinking of Billy Joe Doherty, my pastor, who you knew very well, and George Werber.

(28:00):
These men were like oak trees or bunion trees in my life. I was privileged and blessed to sit in their shade.

Evangelist Daniel King (28:07):
Let’s talk about Brother Hagen. You went to Rhema. Tell me some of the lessons that you learned there in the spirit of Rhema that

Christopher Alam (28:19):
You

Evangelist Daniel King (28:19):
Carry in your life

Christopher Alam (28:20):
Now. Well, I learned about faith and because Brother Hagen was a prophet, but mostly a teacher in the sense that at Rhema, in the classroom, he didn’t function as a prophet, but he functioned as a teacher and he taught us. He carried rich revelation from the word of God. As a result, I could be wrong. I feel like many who come out of Rhema, they carry that DNA and they become teachers. And many pastors who come out of Rhema, they also carry the teaching thing on their lives. Many Rhema churches are like teaching centers, that’s what they are. When I was there, I understood that I appreciate that. It really helped me later on when I taught in Bible college in Sweden to be a teacher. I think I was fairly okay, competent to teach. But one thing I did learn, the Lord dealt with me.

(29:21):
He said, “Now you take the principles of faith and translate that into what I have called you to do so that you’re not a copy of Brother Hagen teaching faith, but you’re doing what I’ve called you to do, but carrying that spirit of faith.” That helped me because I went out. We got miracles, blind eyes open, dead people raised up and believing God for souls. It’s the same principles of faith, but I learned. I should say, I tell people that everything about the way in which we do ministry, in which my wife and I Rita and I, the way we live and with our relationship with the Lord and how we believe God and all those things we learned from Brother Hagen, everything. It was like everything I learned about life and ministry, we learned from Brother Hagen. But what I learned more from Brother Hagen was after Rhema, because when I came back later on, I was blessed that I became very close to Brother Hagen.

(30:30):
I got to spend a lot of time with him, sitting with him in his office, asking him questions, and he would talk. Now, people say that Brother Hagen didn’t like to talk and he was quiet, which is true. But I discovered that if you went to Brother Hagen to tell him about your latest revelation, he would say, “Okay, yep.” He wouldn’t say much. And people got frustrated about that. But if I sat there and asked him questions, asked him questions, not there to impress him with my revelation, then he would talk. We would spend hours talking and he would speak into my life. But the things I learned about him, the greatest thing was that he was a man of great love. And I’ll never forget, whenever I was in Tulsa, he would ask me to speak at the Bible school or take prayer and healing school, something.

(31:24):
He would always ask me to speak. So one day he asked me to speak at the prayer and healing school. So I said, “Okay, I’ll do it.” And so when I was walking to the prayer and healing school, he was walking with me. So we went into the green room and then he was so kind. He looked at me, he said, “Oh.” So he pulled out a little comb out of his pocket and he. I’m sorry.

(31:59):
He took out this little comb and he combed my hair. Wow. That was a fatherly gesture. I’ll never forget that. He combed my hair and then I said, “Thank you, dad.” Then he made sure my mic was okay. And then when I was going in, he went, I said, “Where are you going, dad?” He said, “I came to listen to you.” I said, “No, no.” I said, “No, this is wrong in every way I can think of.” But he said, “No, no, I got to see whether you’re doing it right or you’re teaching some nonsense. See whether I taught you right.” And he laughed. So I sat there and then Mom Hagen came in. I was intimidated, but it was great. He was always encouraging, very kind. He asked me to speak at camp meeting, but I was never advertised. He just picked me out of the crowd, asked me, have me speak.

(32:50):
So he was very kind to me and he ministered to me. But the last time I met him, this was soon after the summit he had with the big prosperity preachers, and he warned me about the love of money.

Evangelist Daniel King (33:04):
Right at the end of Kenneth Hagen’s life, he had a conference dealing with people who were using the prosperity message in the wrong way.

Christopher Alam (33:14):
Extreme prosperity. Yeah. I mean, they were like. And he wrote a book about it called The Midas Touch, which in my eyes is the best book on biblical finances ever written. So I sat with him immediately after that and he actually began to preach to me and warn me about. He told me to live free from the love of money and to trust God because he said money is connected to vision. God will always give you what you need in order to what he has called you to do. And he warned me about manipulating people to give money. He said, don’t even go there.

Evangelist Daniel King (33:55):
Don’t use manipulation.

Christopher Alam (33:57):
Don’t use manipulation, promising people returns, that kind of thing, hundredfold returns to get them to give to a ministry. He says, don’t do that. So he really warned me. I took that to heart because a man like him, the last. That wasn’t the last time I met him, but I met him other times also, but there were always other people then. This was my last one-on-one meeting with him. And so the things he said to me really made an impact on me.

Evangelist Daniel King (34:26):
What did you learn from Pastor Billy Joe Doherty? Because you became a member at Victory Church right at the very beginning when Pastor Billy Joe and Sharon first started it. And that’s my home church. I’ve been going to Victory since I was six years old and my parents were missionaries sent out of victory. So what did you learn from Pastor Billy Joe Daugherty?

Christopher Alam (34:48):
Pastor Billy Joe Daugherty, right in the beginning when victory first started, we went there. I soon noticed one thing. There were several things about him because Tulsa is known for these big, great teachers, Bob Yandian and Brother Hagen and Buddy Harrison. Everybody was in Tulsa.

Evangelist Daniel King (35:10):
Or Roberts. T.L.

Christopher Alam (35:12):
Osborne.

Evangelist Daniel King (35:14):
Tulsa’s blessed.

Christopher Alam (35:14):
We’ve got some good people. I told people, but what happened? I remember one day there was a little kid there who was born with I think a brain damage of some kind. If I remember the details and God healed that little kid, that little girl, her understanding was very little, but her parents brought her to church and she got healed. Then there was a man there, a grownup man, and he had the intellectual capacity of his seven years old. I watched him how he was normal, began to talk like a man age appropriate in his 30s. I suddenly realized one thing about Pastor Billy Joe, that he wouldn’t preach over your head. Rainer Bunke once said to me, he says, “Jesus said, feed my sheep.” He didn’t say, “Feed my giraffes.” Feeding a giraffe is mean you’re going over people’s heads. Normally we admire that, wow, what revelation that was.

(36:30):
But Billy Joe, if you’re looking for that kind of revelation, go somewhere else. But if you want something simple and life changing, that’s where you went to victory. I suddenly realized that Pastor Billy Joe, he preached to this man who had the intellect of a seven year old. He preached in a way so that a seven year old would take a hold of the word and develop faith to be healed. And this guy was healed by his own faith because of Pastor Billy Joe’s. I realized that’s a tremendous gift.

(37:09):
I saw these things happen. I was at victory during that time, so I suddenly realized the power there is in being able to teach people the word at that level. Pastor Billy Joe would teach so that even a six or seven year old could take that. So that man with a 33 year old man’s body, but the brain of a seven year old, he took a hold of that preaching and he walked with it and he did – He

Evangelist Daniel King (37:37):
Received a miracle.

Christopher Alam (37:38):
He received a miracle. So that was probably the greatest thing about Pastor Billy Joe Doughty. He had a simplicity about him, but he carried a tremendous anointing. Then he had such a heart for missions, such a heart for the world. So later on when we. And he took notice of Brita and me because we were the first foreigners to go to that church, come to Rhema, go to church. Then when we came back to Sweden, he saw me in the crowd and then we kept in touch. We kept in touch and I still have many notes he would send me telling me, “Hey, we are praying for you. Appreciate the work you’re doing in Burma, in India and all those places.” He always remembered me, and that means a lot. When you’re a young guy and you’re out there, you’re beginning and a man like Billy Joe Doughty writes you handwritten notes and remembers you.

(38:32):
That was a great thing. Then when we moved to the US, I went to see him and he would have me come and speak at Victory. I think we met there also. After he went home to be with the Lord Pastor Shannon, he had me. So he had a profound impact upon me when it came to a world vision, when it came to missions and his humility.

(38:59):
He was a genuine man. I remember a couple, they were missionaries in Afghanistan. It was bad. The Taliban were outside Kabul, they were fighting. And this man, his wife, it got really bad. He sent his wife to the US. She came to Tulsa and she told me this story that she got a job as a nurse. She had just moved. Her husband was going to come in a couple of months. He was still in Kabul. So he said she bought an old car and finished her night shift in the hospital. Somewhere on Lewis, the car broke down and she’s middle of the night, she’s stranded there. She’s standing outside her van. She doesn’t have a mobile phone. She doesn’t know what to do. When suddenly a minivan drives up and stops and out steps Pastor Billy Joe and Sharon and she said, “I recognize them straight away.

(39:51):
I haven’t seen them on TV.” Pastor Billy Joe came, introduced himself. “I’m Billy Jo Daugherty. My gosh, Sharon, we are pastors. Anything we can do for you? “So he said,” Pastor Billy Jo, without knowing that she recognized them, called AAA and stayed with them until AAA came. And then he drove them home. And by that time it was like 1:00, 1:30 at night. And that’s when she said, “This man is a real pastor. That’s the church I’m going to go to.” So she ended up going to Victory.

Evangelist Daniel King (40:23):
Wow, that’s a great story.

Christopher Alam (40:26):
And even

Evangelist Daniel King (40:26):
The fact that he was driving a minivan, sometimes people can drive fancy cars and show off, but Pastor Billy Joe, he wanted to put every dollar into soul winning, whether it was locally in Tulsa, he would go preach at tent crusades out in the different neighborhoods in Tulsa or going to different nations

Christopher Alam (40:50):
Overseas.

Evangelist Daniel King (40:51):
He loved going after

Christopher Alam (40:53):
Schools. I have a friend in Dennis Rouse. He has a church in Atlanta. I think last I heard he had over 17,000 people. Dennis and Colleen told me that when. I think they were at Rema. When they were at Rema, there was a fire in Pastor Billy Joe’s house and the house burnt down. You probably remember that many years ago. It was in the Tulsa world. Dennis said, “We want to go and see what kind of house that was.” It was an ordinary, regular four bedroom house in a regular neighborhood. And he said to his wife, he said, “Colleen, one day when we are in the ministry and God blesses us, that’s the kind of lifestyle we will live.” Billy Joe became his role model. I remember I stayed in his house in Atlanta. He lived in a regular four bedroom house and I stayed with him.

(42:01):
Then he told me, he says, “A few years ago, the Atlanta constitution, whatever the newspaper is, they tried to do an expose on the pastors of mega churches and they wrote about the names of the big preachers and their big mansions, multimillion dollar mansions, and then they came to his neighborhood to check his house and they went to the neighbors. Who lives there? Pastor Dennis Rouse. Is this his real house? Yeah, he lives here. And you see those two Acura cars, that’s him and his wife’s car. They’re the same car, white Acuras, and he walks his dog here every morning.” Are you sure? Yeah, that’s him. And so they realized that it was not interesting to report on Dennis Ross anymore. So I know people on whom Pastor Billy Joe had such an impact.

Evangelist Daniel King (42:51):
Yeah. What about Reinhard Bonke? You mentioned him. What did you learn from Reinhard?

Christopher Alam (42:57):
I got to know Brother Reinhard Bonnke in 1987 and we became very close. He really encouraged me and spoke into my life. I learned a lot from him just by watching him, his ethos. One thing about him, his humility. He was a very humble man. He was a genuinely humble man. The other thing was that he cared for. I don’t like to use the expression cared for the little people, guys like me who were not significant in the kingdom of God. He invested in our lives. He loved to sit with pastors of small churches and he would invest in our lives and encourage us and talk to us. I saw that myself. If I ever had any questions, he would always be willing, ready to answer me. He was very kind. I’ll never forget, he was doing a campaign in a place called Onebee, a very small town.

(43:56):
You probably wouldn’t find it on a map, but for some reason he ended up in Onabe in Sweden to do a crusade and people came from all over. There were 5,000 people in a football field and there was only one little hotel in Anabe and he was staying there. I was with him in the coffee shop and about, I should say half a dozen pastors, and there was one evangelist that very small churches. Some had 60, 70 people. They were sitting there. Brother Reinhard was basically, he was encouraging us, but he was also listening to these pastors. Then he said, “Excuse me, brothers, excuse me in just a minute.” Then he got up and he left the table and he went to the lift, the elevators, and there was a long-haired kid, about a teenager, and Brother Reinhard put his arm around him and was talking to him.

(44:48):
Then he laid hands on him, prayed for him, came back. I said, “Brother Reinhard, who was that?” He said, “Just a kid staying at the hotel with his parents and I’ve been witnessing to him. I want to bring him to Jesus.” I though, “Here’s a man who preaches to a million people in Nigeria, and he comes here and he bothers about one teenage kid. I mean, that’s a real soul winner.” Then after that, he continued talking to us, listening to these pastors. After these pastors left, he looked at me, he said, “Christopher, let me tell you something about…” He said, “A man of God…” I don’t remember the exact words, but he said something like this, that a man of God or a real man of God is one who can make people who think they’re insignificant in the kingdom of God, and he can make them feel that they are important and big in God’s kingdom, that you don’t sit there that here I am the great man and you’re nobody’s.

(45:56):
But I noticed that when they got up and left, he made each one of them feel like a million dollars. He made them feel like they were significant in the kingdom of God. I though, wow, I learned two lessons in one day. One was about that little kid and also about the way he dealt with these pastors who thought they were insignificant in the kingdom of God, how he made them feel important and significant. But years later, I put that story in Facebook and a man wrote back to me. H said, “Brother, that young man, that teenager was my nephew, and he’s serving God today because of Brother Reinhard Bonnke. He’s in his 40s now.” I though how wonderful it is. Brother Reinhard Bonne isn’t alive to see that. But those are the things I learned from him by watching him.

Evangelist Daniel King (46:55):
Christopher Alam has written a book called All Things Are Possible. It has some wonderful stories about what God has done around the world. If someone wants to know more about your ministry or wants to help to support some of your crusades, what is your website for them to find more information about you?

Christopher Alam (47:16):
It is www.pentecostalfire.com.

Evangelist Daniel King (47:23):
I like that. That’s a good.

Christopher Alam (47:25):
Pentecostalfire.com. So if you go there, make sure you spell Pentecostal correctly. Or if you just write on your search, Google Christopher Alam Ministry or something, that’ll come up, Pentecostal. So I’ve got that book. Then I’ve got a book on biblical finances, and I’ve got my testimony books called Out of Islam, and we have them available.

Evangelist Daniel King (47:50):
Brother Christopher,

Christopher Alam (47:51):
Thank

Evangelist Daniel King (47:51):
You so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast.

Christopher Alam (47:54):
It’s a blessing. Thank you, brother.