Category: Letters

July 13, 2015

“The length of our days is . . . eighty, if we have the strength” – Psalm 90:10.

“Thus far has the Lord helped us” – 1 Samuel 7:12.

Dear Friends,

Well, I made it! I am 80 today.

I write to you today as a very thankful man. Now back in Nashville, I must say that recent months have been quite difficult – for two reasons. First, although our nearly six months in London’s Kensington Temple have been very fruitful and enjoyable (they have invited us back for 2016), I spent much of the time this year being very unwell. I had sinusitis that went into pneumonia and had to cancel meetings in India and Jordan. That said, I am now perfectly well and my Vanderbilt physician says I am able to continue traveling and preaching all over the world with no difficulty.

Second, two close friends have been taken to Heaven. John Paul Jackson has been snatched away suddenly and I am still trying to come to terms with his passing. I thought he and I were to have a ministry together. I was not prepared for his death. He was 15 years younger than I; I am the one who should have died first. Also, one of my oldest friends – Dale Martin, a Nazarene minister – died a few days ago. Eight days apart in age, we grew up together in Ashland, Kentucky.

I have looked forward to this birthday – doing nothing today but having Louise (my amazing wife of 57 years) at my side and enjoying Toby and Timothy our two grandsons along with T. R. and Annette, Melissa and Rex. For happiness on earth, it doesn’t get better than this. Thank you Lord.

However, there is another reason I have looked forward to this birthday. I will find out if I’m Moses! I hope so. God did not really use Moses until he was 80 (Exod.7:7), and I have wished that, just maybe, God has an important work for me to do at this stage of my life. We will see!

My book It Ain’t Over Till it’s Over – with an endorsement from Yogi Berra and several friends – has come out to coincide with my 80^th birthday. Originally intended to focus on the goal of finishing well, this book was expanded to show the importance of not giving up! “It ain’t over till it’s over” when it comes to answered prayer, the hope of seeing people saved, seeing genuine Revival and experiencing one’s utmost dreams this side of going to Heaven.

Thank you for your love and prayers. These mean more to us than anything else.

God bless you all.

Much love,

R.T. Kendall – Romans 8:28

The letter of RT Kendall to the UK Church

Best-selling author, speaker and the former leader of London’s Westminster Chapel, RT Kendall celebrates his 80th birthday this summer. Premier Christianity magazine asked him to pen an open letter to the UK Church.

To my dear brothers and sisters in the UK Church, I must be one of the most fortunate Americans ever to live in Britain. You have given me my ministry, my identity and some of my all-time best friends. It is here I began to appreciate irony, subtlety and understatement. I cannot adequately express the sense of gratitude I feel toward you all. What is especially encouraging for me is meeting an ever-increasing number of church leaders, many of them young, who have a genuine thirst for God. This speaks well for tomorrow’s generation.

It is to tomorrow’s generation I share some things on my heart.

Don’t water down the message

Firstly, the priority of the gospel. My greatest hope for British evangelicals is that the gospel will never be taken for granted. I have been thrilled to learn how many church leaders and many evangelists have the same concern. The gospel is always under siege, particularly at a theological level. The enemy will always seek to rob the gospel of both its stigma and power. I applaud those who affirm Paul’s teaching of the blood of Christ propitiating the justice of God. Our calling is not to make the gospel palatable but to tell it as it is, and this includes the unpalatable truth about God’s wrath and the judgement to come.

We all want people to become Christians. But why? To make them nicer people to live with? To cause them to be materially better off? Or to live longer? Paul said that if ‘in this life only’ we have hope in Christ we are to be pitied (1 Cor 15:19). Why should we long for people to become Christians? It is because of the wrath of God. The earliest message of the New Testament was to ‘flee’ from the wrath to come. The Bible in a nutshell is this: God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that we should ‘not perish’ but have eternal life (John 3:16).

I’d rather be known in hell than admired in the world

I love to visit the Holy Land to be where Jesus did miraculous things. I also love to visit places where the Holy Spirit did extraordinary things. At least four times I have stood and meditated on a vacant lot in Enfield, Connecticut where on 8th July 1741, Jonathan Edwards preached his historic sermon ‘Sinners in the hands of an angry God’. So great was God’s power that people literally held on to pews in the church and to tree trunks outside to keep from slipping into hell.

Affirm the whole of scripture

Secondly, I affirm the God of the Old Testament. I am always amazed and reassured that Jesus never apologised for the God of the Old Testament – his father! This includes being unashamed of the Genesis account of creation, especially: ‘So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them’ [Genesis 1:27, NIV 1984, italics mine]. The modern redefinition of marriage reflects a disdain for God’s plan in making us male and female. I thank God for those who have resisted this trend, and hold to a biblical definition of traditional marriage.

References to the inspiration of scripture in the New Testament include the 39 books of the Old Testament. If we affirm the New Testament it means we affirm the Old Testament too. I accept there are things in the Old Testament that are hard to swallow. Yes. But this is true with the New Testament too. Part of bearing the stigma for Christ is the willingness to look like fools in the eyes the world.

Remarry the word and the spirit

Thirdly, the word and the spirit will come together as it did in the book of Acts. There is a growing conviction that a remarriage between the word and the spirit is God’s way. I say this because those truly open to the person and work of the Holy Spirit in the operation of spiritual gifts are now in the majority among evangelicals in the UK. Sadly for me, this is not the case in the United States.

We will not win people over by theological argument alone

By word I mean the centrality of the gospel. By spirit I mean signs, wonders and miracles. I believe that it will mean a spontaneous combustion of power and authority for the Church and a wake-up call to the nation. Never forget that John Newton, famous for his hymn ‘Amazing Grace’, was the impetus behind William Wilberforce, who brought incalculable social change to the world. While we wait for this nation-changing awakening, we may thank God for encouraging signs now.

We need the spirit of Christ in us

Fourthly, our very lives must make the world want what we have. Arthur Blessitt was given an open door in Amman when an Arab sheikh noticed him across a restaurant. The sheikh said, ‘I want what you’ve got.’ There was something

about Arthur’s countenance that gripped this Arab. Arthur led him to Christ. We will not win people over by theological argument alone but by a different spirit in us than is in the world.

What will win the world will not come about by the keenest intellect humiliating an opponent but by the most transparently Christ-like person melting hearts. When Paul determined to know nothing among the Corinthians but Jesus Christ and him ‘crucified’ [1 Corinthians 2:2], it was his commitment both to the objective gospel of the cross but also subjectively to the manner of life he proposed to live before those who had never heard the gospel.

Part of bearing the stigma for Christ is the willingness to look like fools in the eyes the world

Who are you impacting?

My old mentor Rolfe Barnard preached a sermon called ‘The man who was known in hell’. It was based upon the incident in Acts when a demon said, ‘Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?’ (19:15 [NIV]). Rolfe pointed out that it was Jesus and Paul – and not the man trying to cast out demons – who had a reputation in hell. That sermon influenced me deeply when I was young, helping me to aspire to be a threat to the devil. If I had to choose I’d rather be known in hell than admired in the world.

Robert Murray M’Cheyne saw a true touch of revival in Scotland. Six months after he died in 1843 a young minister travelled to St Peter’s Church, Dundee to inquire what M’Cheyne’s secret had been. An old elder took the young

preacher to M’Cheyne’s desk, saying to him: ‘Put your elbows on the desk and place your forehead in your hands, and let the tears flow.’ The elder then took the young man to M’Cheyne’s pulpit, telling him: ‘Now put your elbows on the pulpit and place your forehead in your hands, and let the tears flow.’ M’Cheyne had a passion for the lost. May God grant us a fresh passion for the unsaved who are in danger of the wrath to come.

After M’Cheyne died, a letter addressed to him was found in his coat pocket. It was written by a man who had heard him preach the previous Sunday. In it he wrote that he came to the church unconverted, but the sight of M’Cheyne’s face – not the sermon itself – so gripped this man that he could not help himself – and was instantly saved.

We need to make a greater impact on our generation and on generations to come.

‘T’was not the truth you taught, to you so clear, to me so dim;

But when you came to me you brought a sense of Him.

Yes, from your eyes He beckoned me, from your heart His love was shed;

When I lost sight of you and saw the Christ instead.’

(Anon)

Dear brothers and sisters, Jesus loves the Church. He loves the UK. So stay strong in the work God has called you to and never be ashamed of the gospel. Proclaim it with power and truth. May the grace of our Lord Jesus

Christ, through the sprinkling of his blood by the Holy Spirit, be with you all evermore.

Amen.

John Paul Jackson (1950-2015)

As it happens, I write these lines on the eve of John Paul’s memorial service. The irony is, I thought it would be the other way around, that is, he would be speaking at my memorial service; I will be 80 in a few months; he was only 64.

In January 1991 Louise and I flew to Anaheim, California, courtesy of John Wimber. I met Mike Bickel the next day and he was keen to have me meet someone. I sat in a room that looked like a doctor’s office. In no time my name was called. I was introduced to John Paul Jackson by Mike, although he did not tell John Paul my name or anything about me. For the next several minutes John Paul told me things about my life that seemed to me to be supernaturally revealed to him. He then prophesied a number of things; some have come to pass, some have not. Those which have come to pass include three books he said I would write and especially that I would have influence one day in South Africa. When it was all over, as I was leaving I turned to him and said, “Young man, if what you say is true the world will know about it; if what you say is false, the world will know about it”. I forgot I said that. John Paul has repeated this several times. He said it scared him nearly to death.

Mike Bickel brought John Paul to see me in my vestry at Westminster Chapel in 1993. It was then John Paul gave more prophecies, especially one about our son T. R. – an almost incredible word that came true with amazing accuracy in 1995. The next time I saw John Paul was in September 2001, a couple weeks after 9/11. He then gave me the most astonishing and thrilling prophecy I have ever received. However, this one has not been fulfilled. A couple years later I preached with him for CLAN in Scotland – two years in a row. Subsequently I became a member of his Board. I introduced him to bonefishing in Bimini, Bahamas. I had hoped we would have a return trip to Bimini this year. Most of all, for some reason I thought that he and I would have some kind of ministry together. We had preached together a few times, were on TV together, did some videos, but most recently a planned trip to India had to be canceled and also one to Hong Kong. So the thought of further ministry with him is now over. I am having to come to terms with life without John Paul.

I spent about thirty minutes making a video for use at his memorial service. Because of time it was edited down to seven or eight minutes. One of the things left out (they had to edit it because of time for other speakers) was John Paul’s emphasis on “character is more important than gifting”. One would have thought this goes without saying, but, sadly, there were a surprising number of Charismatic leaders who opposed this teaching. John Paul’s view regarding character over gifting was one of the main things that made me feel comfortable about him. Holiness is more important than seeing miracles.

But now he is gone. The Lord snatched him away. Yes. It was the Lord. If you think it was a victory for Satan, shame on you! God is bigger than the devil. Why God was pleased to take John Paul is unprofitable speculation. But what is not speculation is God’s will to do this. We may never know why. It is none of our business. What is our business is to focus on God and trust in His faithfulness and sovereignty. My heart goes out to Diane his wife and their two sons – also those connected to Streams Ministries whose future may be in doubt. But God will look after each of them, be sure of that.

I will miss him. I am pretty sure I will miss him more than almost anyone who reads these lines. I shall seek the face of God more earnestly than ever – not to find out why God took John Paul but what we are to do in days ahead. I have only a vague idea. It will be interesting for me to see if John Paul’s most daring words concerning my own future will come true. Don’t ask me what they are. I will only say that if they are true, (1) I will be around a while longer and (2) God has plenty for me to do.

I must say that one of the most helpful prophetic words he gave me was some ten years ago when we lived in Key Largo, Florida. Out of the blue he said: “R. T., you will live to a ripe old age. But if you don’t get in shape physically you won’t be around to enjoy it” (or words to that effect). I took them seriously. These words changed my life. Steve Strang gave me exercises which I do regularly to this day. T. R. bought be a special book on dieting. I have no doubt that I would not have come through open heart surgery so brilliantly 7 years ago – or be able to travel the world as I do – had not John Paul have given me those unexpected words. And yet I still thought I would die first. I think he did too. I think he was counting on a miracle to raise him up right to his death.

So John Paul was not right about everything. After all, Paul said, “We know in part and we prophesy in part” (1 Cor.13:9). Also, we prophesy “in proportion to our faith” (Rom.12:6). And since nobody has a perfect faith except Jesus (John 4:34), none of us of us should expect to be infallible in our understanding of God’s word or in our application of it. That is enough to humble us. None of us is perfect.

Many of us have a lot of thinking to do. I know I do. I don’t think we should be hasty in trying to figure things out. I do suspect that there needs to be a sea change or paradigm shift in much of our thinking about the prophetic realm. For my part, I am a “word” man. I don’t claim to have a prophetic gift. I only want to know what God wants me to know – nothing more.

One last thing (for now). I myself have made a big deal about prophetic people not saying “the Lord told me” when they utter their words. The habit of saying “the Lord told me” is the hardest to break for people like this. But John Paul not only agreed with me but asked me to share this perspective at his last Convergence Conference with seventy or eighty prophetic people present. I was very forthright with them – fully expecting them to be against me. If they were, they didn’t show it. In fact, all I talked with agreed with me. Whether they will be able to put into practice what I talked about – not saying “the Lord told me” – remains to be seen. It is my view that you and I should not say “the Lord told me this or that”; it is transgressing the Third Commandment not to take the Name of the Lord in vain or misuse His Name (Exod.20:7; Matt.5:33-37). To make the audacious claim “the Lord told me” means that God swore an oath to you which in turn means you can’t get it wrong. But thousands do get it wrong, which goes to show the Lord didn’t tell them after all. I fear that our desire to say “the Lord told me” is not out of the wish to give Him glory but to make ourselves more credible – which is not right to do.

I thank God for John Paul. It was a privilege to know him. Let us honor him but without esteeming him too much – or God will be displeased with us.

R.T. Kendall