(inspirational music) - [Narrator] In every generation, there have been revivals, massive moves of the Spirit, that changed the course of history. In every revival, there were believers, like you, who chose to answer the call, to become the one in their generation. Discover your call to be the one in your generation. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Revival Radio TV. I'm your host, Gene Bailey. All right, so here we are, week four of my time with Brother Copeland and Jerry Savelle.
Listen, I know that you've enjoyed this. In fact, we're gonna wrap it up today. You know, history lets you have 20/20 vision when you see what works and what doesn't. It's easy to look back, isn't it? When God told Jerry Savelle to launch into his own ministry, you're gonna find out today what happened. It might surprise you. In fact, the producers of this show pulled some rare photos from the KCM archive so we can get some inside stories from Brother Copeland and Jerry Savelle.
They didn't know they were coming, so you wanna watch. So, come along with me as we hear what they had to say. Inside every born again believer, there's greatness, and inside of every Holy Ghost baptized believer, there is a method of stepping out into the known and the unknown, known to God, unknown to us, but you trust Him and you go out into that place, praise God, just get out there so far you might now come back. Amen. Sounds good. Yeah. That sounds good to me. Doesn't it you? It does.
Oh, Gene. I'm the hungriest man on this planet, brother. I'm telling you. (laughing) Yeah, that's good. That's good. Praise God. Do we need, and I agree with you, Brother Jerry, about this latter rain, just like we're here and the rain hit the roof here, where the rain is here, it's coming and do that. And what did He say is the way to get it? Pray. Pray. Pray ye for the latter rain. That's right. Right. There's no move of God without prayer.
- [Gene] Amen. Christian failure is first of all a prayer failure. It all comes back to that. It all comes back. Wow. Pray and faith. First of all. Remember this? Yeah. The apostle Paul wrote to Timothy. What'd he say? First of all, pray. - [Gene] That's right. For all men, kings, and all that are in authority, that the church live in peace and honesty and godliness, for this is good in the sight of God, our Savior, who gave Himself as a ransom for all to be testified in due time.
You can't get the testimony til after you do the praying. - [Gene] Amen. Praise. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Verily, it is not an option. Verily. No. Pray and faint not. So, you don't ever quit praying. No. Nuh uh. Prayer without ceasing, Paul said. Yeah. You can't do that, except in tongues. Yeah. That's right. That's right. 'Cause your time runs out, doesn't it? Yeah, you can pray without ceasing.
Man, you're gonna be standing in a grocery store line, standing their praying just silently to yourself. It seems like, and I grew up charismatic renewal and the baptism in the Holy Spirit, my family, we got kicked out of church 'cause we believed that the baptism of the Holy Spirit
was for today. (laughing) And all that, but it seemed like we almost lost it; and Brother Hagin, I remember him, I saw it on video, where he talked about, if we're not careful, we're gonna lose it in this generation; and I never thought we would be at that place. I've taught you faith through My Word, and permitted you to go through certain experiences, and you've learned faith through My Word and by experience. Now, go teach my people what I've taught you.
Way back in May of 1950, He said that to me. Now, in more recent time, the Lord said to me, "there is a move of the Spirit that's gonna be lost to this generation unless you teach them." You see, they knew the Word all right, but they knew very little about really the move of the Spirit of God. You have to teach it to every generation, and you have to go back to the fundamentals. Is that where we failed? We stopped teaching You have to go back to the fundamentals.
Let me show what the fundamentals are. - [Gene] Yeah. Gene. This is a cup. - [Gene] Yes. You have to go back that far. - [Jerry] Just like a coach at a football game. Yes, sir. Vince Lombardi had a losing season, boy. Vince Lombardi don't have losing seasons. The next one, when they came back to start the next season, that's the way he started. He said, "gentlemen," and these guys are the best in the business, "this is a football." Yeah. Made about half of 'em mad.
He went back to the very basics of the basic of the basic fundamentals, never lost anymore. Amen. I saw something just the other day where one of his players, back, well, Bart Starr just recently passed away. Yeah. Yeah, he did. And this one guy said, "what normally would have took most coaches 30 minutes to cover, Vince Lombardi would spend six hours on. Yep. That's the key. - [Gene] Wow, that's good. You can't ever assume that everybody knows what you're talking about.
- [Gene] And not rushing. It has to be take it back to the very fundamentals of faith. Yeah. It's a spiritual force not born of the mind. It's born of this born again human spirit, and I don't care if you've been living and walking by faith and making faith confessions every day of your life for 45 years, it's time to go back and renew the basics 'cause you have a tendency to let stuff slip, particularly in prayer, and the laws that govern prayer. That's good.
Well, I got some pictures here I wanna show ya. Now, here's you with a plane. (laughing) That's the first airplane. That's the Sky Lane. That's the little Sky Lane, the very first airplane we had. It was too small when we got it, but it was the very first one, and that's at the Sphinx Airport where I bought it. That's the one you flew me over to this property in. Yes, sir. And he would do touch and gos out here at this runway. - [Kenneth] Before we ever owned some. Yeah, before you owned it.
This is like 1971. Yeah. Or two. And we'd do a touch and go out here, he had to scatter the cattle off the runway first, and then he'd say to me, "you hearing me saying it. One day I'm gonna own this place. We'll have our headquarters here." That was in '69. Well, I came in '70, '71, but you were doing me, you were flying me over in that plane, saying that then. Man. One of these days, I'm gonna own this place. (laughing) Yeah, there you go. And we're sitting on it right now.
Here is, I love this picture. Now, this is. Maybe you can tell us where this meeting was at. There's both of you in the picture. - [Jerry] That's Bill Green. - [Kenneth] Yes, it is. Yes, it is. It's Bill Green from Kansas. Yes it is. That's who that is. I'm thinking. I'm thinking that was up in Omaha. Yeah. (laughing) We had the meeting in a brand new Hilton hotel. Right. And we rented the ballroom.
It was the only place there big enough and we were gonna be there 21 days, and there was a guy that really was just really excited and turned on to God. Well, you know, what's the name of the railroad? Western Pacific, I think. No, Union Pacific. Union Pacific. Union Pacific Railroad, and their headquarters were there, and they had a bunch of old throw away cars out there and there was a bunch of homeless people living in those cars. I was going witnessing there for the service. That's right.
I got California shorty show. Yeah, you did. (laughing) And these guys, I mean, alcoholics. You could smell 'em when they walked in the door, bless their hearts. - [Jerry] I'm the one who brought 'em in there. (laughing) And so, they're sitting out in the lobby waiting for the meeting to start. This is a brand new Hilton hotel, man, and they came around and they said, "Mr. Copeland, is there anything you can do to guide those people to another part of the hotel?" I said, "no, I can't."
(laughing) Anyway. Man, and the power of God hit that place. People just stacking up like card wood up on the, and this is before anybody had ever fallen out under the Power in our ministry. (laughing) So, this one guy got born again, and got filled with the Spirit of God, and (groaning), he was so thrilled. He was so thrilled, and I'm just preaching, I was preaching what happened from the cross to the throne, the absolute defeat and destruction of Satan in the middle of hell.
I'm preaching that faith, man, and he got so excited, he's standing up right in the middle, right in the middle of it, he said, "give 'em hell, preacher. The talisman is still with ya!" And then he realized what he said and put his hands over his mouth. (laughing) And they had a revolving door in the front of that hotel, you know, everybody's walking out, Bill walked out, and he came up in the prayer line and I said, "Bill, what do you need?" "You remembered my name."
he didn't tell me what he needed, he was so overwhelmed with the whole thing, and we walked out there, they were coming out, and this guy coming through the revolving door right behind him, "ugh, Copeland's a fake, and all the rest of 'em are fake." So, Bill just waited til he got through the door and just decked him and put him on the sidewalk, sat down on him, and said, "ain't nobody talks about my preacher like that." (laughing) Wow. Wow. It was exciting days. I'll bet.
You were telling me at the house the other day about soul winning, and you were talking about Jerry Savelle here in Jacksonville, Florida. Yeah. We were preaching two services a day there in the beach's auditorium. That was my first meeting with him. Okay. And he met us out there, and Jerry was helping and doing everything the he needed to do. Between the morning and evening services, he'd go out on the beach and witness and get people born again. We were there 21 days.
- [Gene] Bring 'em into the meeting. And we had 500 people get born again in the meetings. He matched us on the beaches, and he was baptizing 'em in the ocean. One time, I don't remember where this was, maybe this was Omaha, there's a guy had a hard seizure right out in the middle of the street. It was Omaha. Yeah. And Jerry was standing there on the corner, and boy, everybody got away from the guy. He's having a hard seizure right there on the street.
Right downtown, Omaha. And Jerry just went right out there and just grabbed him by the hair of the head and cast the devil out of him before the ambulance could get there, got him saved. Well, the ambulance drove up and put the guy in the ambulance, and Jerry was standing there, and the guy was going, "Jesus. Jesus, Jesus." (laughing) What was funny though, when I knelt down, when I screamed, "in the Name of Jesus, you come out of him," now, there was a crowd. People got out of their cars.
They're circling around him. You oughta see them scatter when I hollered, "in the Name of Jesus." I was left alone, boy. (laughing) Oh, praise God, Gene. Yeah, okay. So, do you remember this place? - [Jerry] Oh, yeah. (laughing) Yeah. - [Gene] And then, that was quickly followed by this place. - [Kenneth] Yeah, the different offices. - [Jerry] That's the white settlement area. - [Kenneth] Yeah. And this was Barry Street. Yes, sir. Yeah, this one came before that one.
This was where (laughing) This was where. This is where the hallway was so skinny. The hallway was my office. (laughing) He was making tapes out in the hallway, and you had to just kinda skinny by of the room enough to get. It's Kenneth and Gloria, granddad, one secretary, and one bookkeeper, Yeah. And me. So, if the bookkeeper or granddad or the secretary had to go to the bathroom, I had to leave my hallway 'cause the bathroom was down at the end, and they couldn't squeeze by me.
All right, now then, there was this one in November of '72. Yeah. Yeah. - [Jerry] Now, this picture's when I had taken it over. There's my dad's truck out front. - [Kenneth] Now, this was the first really nice office we had. We built this building. Yeah. And it was really nice. It was. And then, when we moved, Jerry took it. I took it, and then we added another section on the back of it, where I had Overcoming Faith Center.
Yeah. Where I had about 500 Jerry came in to me, he said, "the Lord's calling me out in my own ministry." Well, I knew that. I knew it was time, but then he did something that I never heard of anybody doing. He said, "I want you to cut off my salary." He said, "I'm gonna have to learn to live without that salary." He said, "let's just do it now, while you're here to help me and teach me what to do here." And I said, Jerry, you." "No," he said. "Let's do this." And so, of course, we did.
(laughing) And his income went up. (laughing) But it something like doubled, I think, and he said, "I should've done this a long time ago." (laughing) That month of December, that was 1973. - [Gene] Really? And the month of December, before I was gonna leave at the end of that year, December 31st, that one month, God blessed me, 'cause I wasn't out preaching.
I was with you. Yeah. And God blessed me with more money in that one month than I had made the previous nine months working with Kenneth Copeland Evangelistic Association. Plus, He supplied me with offices fully furnished, everything was paid for, and booked for six months preaching. Yes, sir. Man. Yes, sir. So, you were thinking, "I should've done this earlier." (laughing) Faith in God. Faith in God. Not faith in Kenneth Copeland Ministries. See, working with him. It's faith in God.
Working with him, that was my bible school. Yeah. Yeah, that was my bible school. That's where I learned faith. Yeah. This last one is a, we searched high and low. That is Gloria and my wedding picture. - [Gene] This is your wedding picture, but tell me about this guy. Oh, Joe Steward. Oh, God love him.
I had gone by Central Flying Service in Little Rock looking for a job, and my flying time was low enough, of course, I had a commercial ticket and all that, but I had put on my application that I had sales experience. I was a low timer in time and experience, and this was before I had gotten born again, and Gloria and I had been married but just a short time. So, no. Before we got married.
And I went back there and Joe was General Manager and his father-in-law owned Central Flying Service, and I just felt well I'm gonna go back by there, so I went in to talk to Joe. He said, "Kenneth," and he talked to me about this, and then he said, "I really don't know why I'm doing this, but," he said, "we need somebody here in some sales this week." Come to find out he's a born again Southern Baptist preacher with a heart for the mission field.
Oh, he wanted to go up to mission field so bad, and he applied to Southern Baptist Mission Board, they said, "okay, you need this and you need this, and all this school part of it," so in the meantime, his dad-in-law taught him how to fly, so he could use that in mission field. He had all of his ratings and everything, good pilot, and so, he went back down, said, "I'm ready to go," they said, "no, you're too old." "Well, why didn't you tell me that before we all of this?" Anyway.
Then, years later, I was praying one morning in the Spirit, and I got Joe on my heart, and I'm thinking, what? So, I called his mother and I said, "where can I get ahold of Joe?" "Well, Kenneth," she told me, gave his phone number, and I called him, and I said, "Joe, tell me what you're doing." "Well, Kenneth," he said, you know the Jesus film in all the different languages?
He got the Jesus film in Spanish, and I don't know what they call it, the (speaking in a foreign language) they're out there across the border and it's nothing but just buck brush just as far as you can see, and he said, "I'm just getting my pickup and get a loudspeaker," (speaking in a foreign language) So, it's a movie tonight, Just as soon as the sun go down, and he said, "I have a screen and a projector," and he said, "man," he said, "we're liable to have as many as 100, 150 people
following that pickup," and he said, "all of 'em get saved." - [Gene] Wow. He said, "we've been doing that and doing that and doing that," and he said, "now, I need some more equipment, man."
(laughing) They came to the place where they were winning up to 30,000 people a year in those brushes and places like that in southern central Mexico, and so the ministry bought him another, and then we bought him a duty truck, and then more equipment, and just kept on and kept on until Joe just was winning, just praise God, just winning thousands and tens of thousands of people. So, see. It takes the calling, and a man that won't quit.
Willing to do it. Just willing to do it and he just kept doing it and kept doing it and kept doing it, kept doing it til the day he went home to be with the Lord. Wow. That was good. And he called me, he came to Southwest and he said, "Kenneth, now I believe in healing." He said, "there's no question in my heart and mind about that." But he said, "I'm not there." He said, "I just need more teaching on it," and so forth and so on, and I said, "well, praise God, Joe. I agree with you."
He said, "you agree with me." He said, "I'm believing for a heart transplant," and he said, "my heart's in really bad condition," and he said, "I need you to help agree with me." I said, "sure." So, we agreed together and he supernaturally, just supernatural the way he got a heart, and he bled to death on the operating table. The devil got in there some way, and we still support his wife and family. They're still in mission field, and they're still doing what they do in Mexico. Oh, that's great.
After all these years, and he is the man that married Gloria and me. That's awesome. Okay. This is an in-progress picture. Maybe you recognize that place. Oh, yeah. Glory to God. Yes, sir. My, my, my. Now, this sits on 1500 acres of land. I didn't have, I didn't have anything, and this is back in the '70s, and I already had a supernatural experience. I knew this was our property.
There wasn't any question in my mind about that, and I found out the man that owned it, and I got up one morning, I'm just standing there shaving and the Lord said, "it's time to go see Mr. Prewitt." I didn't have any idea of what to do or what to say, and the Lord said to me, he said, "you go tell him," now see, you gotta be sensitive to the Spirit of God, "that I have need of that property." So, that's when I had made an appointment with him. He was 89 years old.
He was a bachelor, and he was in oil and gas business, and he owned this property. He bought it out of the government. It was a Navy base during World War Two, and so, that's all I said to him, and he talked very slowly, he said, "well, it's for sale." (laughing) But now, before he said that, he sat in his rocking chair for about 20 minutes, and I'm sitting there. Now, I learned to keep my mouth shut when I was with a Brother. - [Gene] Brother Roberts.
Yeah. And then, he said, "well, it's for sale," and I said, "Mr. Prewitt, I don't have any money, but God'll get it for me." It seemed like an hour and a half, you know? - [Gene] Right. And he said, "come back to see me." (laughing) So, we made another appointment, went back over there, and he said, "I'm gonna see you boys through this." I said, "Mr. Prewitt, another thing you need to know. I don't borrow money." I said, "I don't believe it's right to mortgage another man's property. Do you?
It belongs to Jesus." (laughing) "You come back to see me," (laughing) but you can't just sit there and just talking and talking and talking and talking. He wouldn't have had anything to do with us, and the only way you're gonna find these things is praying in the Spirit of God, and well, the next time we went, he said, "now, I want you to bring board members or something, one of our board members in the real estate business."
Our whole contract was one letter size piece of paper, and he said, "got anything against rent?" I said, "no, sir." And he said, "all right. I'm gonna rent the place to you. No interest in it. He said, "and the Lord tells you to go some place else, give me two weeks notice and all is well."
He said, "now, I'm dividing the property into four equal parts," and he said, "you get one quarter paid for and I'll deed it to you," and he said that, "all your rent goes towards the last quarter," and he said, "now, can you write that contract just like I said it?" And Barry said, "yeah." He said, "okay, write that out there."
And so, he got done with writing it all out, and it was five million and five million, and $80,000, I believe, and he had me sign it, then he handed it back to Barry, and he said, "now, write it again, exactly, only take one million dollars off I'm the first donor." In all of this, Mr. Prewitt hadn't smiled at me one time. Wow. All business. All business.
So, Barry re-wrote it, handed it back down to me, and I signed it and he signed it, and he got this big grin on his face and he slapped that table. He said, you're gonna bigger than Oral Roberts one of these days. (laughing) And after the business is over with, man, he is shouting happy. Wow. Praying in the Spirit, Gene. - [Gene] Wow. And that's the land we're on today. Wow. All I can say is, "Wow." You know, do we still need to target our faith to start something that God lays on our hearts?
Absolutely. It's amazing seeing the fruit from people who have targeted their faith, like Brother Copeland has for over 50 years. What God did for him and Jerry, He can do for you. Your assignment may be completely different from theirs, but God has your plan, and He wants to see you blessed, and He wants to see fruitful results, whether it's praying for someone you never prayed for, or stepping out in a project God wants you to do, He has a plan, and He has the means to make it happen.
That's where your faith comes in. I wanna end today the way that you heard so many times before. God loves you, we love you, and Jesus is Lord. See you next time, right here on Revival Radio TV. (inspirational music)