Jeff's Personal Testimony

  I was born to a Jewish father and a Lutheran mother.  Having a Jewish father,  I didn't know much about Jesus, but when I was 4 years old my mother taught me how to pray.  It wasn't some great prayer, but a generic prayer like, “now I lay me down to sleep.”  They didn't know if I continued to pray, but I continued to pray every night.  When I prayed I lifted my hands.  I never saw anyone lift their hands.  The Holy Spirit was teaching me.  I began to pray for not only my parents, brother, sisters and my dog spot, but I began to pray for the kids down the street and their dogs and cats.  Man, at four years old I began a personal relationship with God!  Jesus came into my room at four years old and called me into the ministry.  Well, Jesus coming into my room did not set right with my father.  Even though we were bad Jews.  We did not practice Judaism and we ate pork!  When I told my brother that I had a vision of Jesus.  My brother said, “Did you eat some pizza last night?  You must have been dreaming".  But, Jesus really did come into my room and call me into the ministry.  Growing up I had this revelation, so I just knew deep down someday I would be a minister.  I always wanted to go to church.  My freshman year of high school a friend invited me to a Baptist church.  Well, Baptists are very good at getting you saved.  They did not have a hard time with me.  I walked in there and they said how many want to get saved?  I walked down to the altar and officially prayed to become a Christian.  I never returned to that church and soon realized that I did not know the bible, so I ran from the calling.  I did not run from God, I ran from the calling.  I ran to Hollywood and for the next six years I was in 31 movies, dozens of commercials and acted on television.  I also did voiceovers for Disney.

  Well, while I was in Hollywood, the Lord came to me and said, “I didn't call you to Hollywood; I called you into the ministry.”  Well, Hollywood was all I knew.  I told Him," no".  He came to me a second time and He said, “Son, I called you into the ministry.”  Again I said no.  God was working on me to surrender.   I was watching Pat Robertson on the 700 club and he said, " It's time to surrender."  Well, at this time a pretty actress invited me to church.  I was ready and wanted to go back to church. So, I went to church with her, but it wasn't a Baptist church.  It was a full gospel church.  When I walked in I saw them raising their hands in worship and I said, "I’m home".  Glory to God!  I'd never seen people raise their hands before, but that's how I prayed.  They were raising their hands, and the glory of God came down.  You could feel the presence of God in that place.  The next week I returned to that church.  They announced there was going to be a water baptism the following Saturday.  When Saturday came I was ready to be water baptized.  I didn't know the time or the place, so I asked the Lord to guide me.  He guided me to the exact park that the baptism was taking place. It was the right place at the right time!  The following weeks the Pastor began talking about Acts chapter 1 and 2.  You know Jewish people are people of the book, what it says you do.  I wasn't going to pick and choose what I was going to believe.  If it is in the bible, I wanted it!  It says in the book of Acts, you are supposed to be also baptized in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues.  I said, "how do I do it".  I went immediately down to pray at the altar and I got baptized in the Holy Spirit.  I wanted everything God had because I knew anything God had was good!  It was a short time later that I received the gift of speaking in tongues.  It empowered my prayers.  The very next month I started a bible study.  I was 21 years old and lived in an apartment with a couple of Christian roommates.  We started inviting people over for the bible study.  You have to understand I grew up without the bible.  I knew some of the Old Testament, but I didn't know the New Testament very well.  So it was the blind leading the blind.  I started watching Fred Price on television and my faith was growing!  Every week I had a bible study.  I'll never forget, one day I decided I was going to have a city wide revival and I rented a facility.  We put flyers all over the area to let people know about it.  You have to understand something, at this time I was acting in movies during the day and having a bible study at night. I had one foot in the world and one foot in the word.  We had a packed house that night coming out to my first citywide revival.  I told them everything I knew in about 5 minutes.  Then I just said, “Praise God, how many people want to get saved,” and people started coming down.  I'll tell you what.  I’ll never forget the title of my first sermon, the gospel in a nutshell and it was about five minutes long.

 A girl named Kathlene came to my bible study.  I didn't look her way, because she was with another guy.  Well, she got saved that night on the way home.  The next week she came to the bible study alone.  Now I was looking her way.  She was so beautiful!  I walked over to her and asked her if she would like to go out and get some coffee afterwards. She said, she didn't drink coffee.  I thought she was turning me down.  I started to walk away, when she said, “But I like hot chocolate.”  We began to date.  We got married the next year.  This whole time I'm having this bible study, I’m still acting in the movies.  I landed a small part in a horror movie.  Here I am doing a horror movie during the day and a bible study at night.  Making a movie in Hollywood is actually boring.   People think that it is exciting.  No, maybe walking down the red carpet when they finally have the movie done.  But, when you're doing a movie you sit around and do nothing for hours while they setup cameras, lights, etc., so you have a lot of idol time with idol hands. I sat around a lot during this horror movie. They have advisors to movies, and advisors to a horror movie are real warlocks, witches, and people of the occult and here they were with us in the same sound stage. This one warlock came in with this pentagram around his neck, and he was laying hands on people and they were falling down by the counterfeit power of Satan. I was getting mad because I knew that it wasn't the power of God.  So, I heard a small voice in me say go down and let him lay his hands on you. I said, “Get thee behind me Satan!" Then I heard the small voice say, “Who is greater?  He who is within you or he who is in the world.” The Lord said to me, “Go down there, I'm going to do something.” So, I said alright.  Now, I walked down there and I am standing in front of him and they have all these different actors sitting there and different workers and they knew my testimony because I wasn't quiet about it. So they were kind of wondering what I was doing up there.  On the outside I was just standing there and man on the inside I was speaking in tongues.  He came over and lifted his hand and was about two feet away from me, when he looked at me and screamed and ran out of the sound stage.  Later on, someone told me he said, “His hand was on fire.” We got to witness to a lot of people in that sound stage and a lot of them got saved. You know the power of God is real. The Koran and all these other books and even a Bible without the power is just another book.

 With the power of God the bible comes alive, Praise God. While doing this horror movie the Lord came to me a third time and he said to me, “I did not call you to Hollywood." I knew in my spirit this was the last time He was going to come to me. I said to Him, “Lord, I don't know Your word, You've seen my bible study and that shows, I don't know Your word." The Lord said to me something very, very wise, “Go learn it.” I went home that day and told my wife “We’re going to bible school.” She said, “I know the Lord has been dealing with me, we're supposed to go to bible school.” But, we didn't know where to go. We didn't know anything about bible school. We were attending a bible study at the time and I went to the leader of this bible study and asked, “Do you know of any bible schools?" He said, “Well, I only know of one because my son lives in the town, and it's out in Arkansas." Now I've never been to Arkansas. I've been living in California. Arkansas seemed like somewhere on another planet. He said there's a Christian university there in Arkansas and they had the Dayspring Christian greeting cards headquarters there, and I can get you a job there if you want to go there.

 Well, I thought here's a job and I can go to school and so we just packed up everything and we moved to Arkansas. We're pulling into this town and we're on one of the side streets where people are out on their lawns and waving at us.   I thought, oh my goodness they must have seen some of my movies. We had never seen friendly people like that before. I entered into this Baptist school. We didn't know what it was. We just knew someone said it was a bible school. Kathlene became the secretary for the president of Dayspring Greeting cards. I became part of the bible department at the school.  The student government wanted a senator from the bible department, so I ran for senator. I found out no one else wanted the job, so I got it. Well, this university was more interested in having parties and living like the world than living for Jesus. I was sold out to Jesus, and I wanted to learn the word and get a hold of God. I'm right in the middle of all this, and I’m a bible senator.

 So I decided that we're going to have revival on this campus. I asked all the Christians on the campus to come together and pray, and the TWO of us prayed. The guy that came and prayed with me was very excited about Jesus.  He was hopping and skipping and lifting up his hands and I said, “What church do you go to? I want to go to your church." He said, "I just moved here." I asked, “Where did you come from?” He said, “I'm from Dallas, Texas.” He said he just transferred from Christ for the Nations Bible School. I wanted what he had so, I went back to my wife that night and said we were moving.  She said she had a dream last night that we were moving. Boy! I praise God that He dealt with her first. So we were packing up our stuff and we were moving to Dallas, Texas. We were at the Baptist Bible College for two semesters and as soon as that semester ended, we left there and went down to Christ for the Nations.  I tell you what, we got fired up in the things of God. I’ll never forget when we walked into Christ for the Nations, everyone was lifting their hands in the student assembly and I said, “I’m home.”  While I was there I was introduced to Kenneth Copeland Ministries and he began to have a great influence on my life. I eventually went to work for him.

 God began to deal with me about the healing ministry. I’ll never forget one day there at Christ for the Nations after a meeting, a girl came forward on crutches and her legs were crippled. Her legs were twisted up, and every toe was growing into another. As she came forward, I was thinking, I wonder if she is coming forward for a headache. You would have hoped the same thing. She came forward and I said, “What do you need” and she said, “My legs.”  I said, “Well, Praise God, Hallelujah!” I began to pray for her. She fell down under the power of God and I laid my hands on her feet. I prayed and prayed. I prayed everything I knew. I prayed petition, supplication, intercession, irrigation whatever I could come up with, I prayed it.  I got up and her legs were just as twisted and her toes were growing into each other.   I said, “Well, praise the Lord” and I began to walk away. Well the Lord had been teaching me about faith through Brother Copeland. The Lord spoke to me so clearly and said, “Why are you giving up?” I said, “Well, I gave you five minutes.”   He said, “Well, yeah, you gave me five minutes without any faith.”  So I walked back over to her and I began to pray, but this time I was just praising Him.  I said, “Thank you Lord Jesus, that by your stripes she is healed. Thank you Lord God that her legs are straight.” Then I stopped and asked, “Lord what do you want me to do?”  He said, “Mold her legs like clay” and I said, “Pardon Me?” He said, “Take her ankle” and I did and you could hear the bones popping and snapping as that leg came straight, every toe came out one by one. Praise God! 

 That changed my life. I wanted to go into the hospitals and clear them out. We graduated from CFNI and moved back to California and I became a Pastor.  I pioneered the work there.  I also joined the Full Gospel Business Men.  It was the original chapter where Demos ministered. They made me their honorary Chaplain, because they saw the anointing on me to pray for the sick. I tell you what, I even got to pray for Demos.  Praise God!  He went from a wheelchair to just a cane, and he started getting better.  We saw so many miracles!  Everything from cancer being healed to people getting out of wheelchairs.  We had a man come in with steel pins in his knees and he could not walk very well.  I prayed for him and the steel pins disappeared.  He was so excited he began to dance before the Lord!  We would see every Saturday morning 200 people come into that breakfast and my goodness, we had lines of people getting healed by the power of God. He is still in the miracle working business. Praise the Lord!

 It was while I was in California pastoring that I was going down a road and God said, “Turn right here.”  I said, “Okay.” and I turned right.  He said go down this road and I went down that road. He said turn left and I turned left.   He said pull over, so I pulled over.  He said, “You see that radio station right there.”  I replied "yes sir". He said, “Go in there and tell the manager to put you on the air.”  Well, being the great man of faith that I am, I went home.  The next day I was at a minister’s meeting and at the meeting a man walks up to me and hands me his card and says, I’m the manager of this radio station.  I began to tell him the story of how I was sitting outside his radio station the day before and what the Lord had told me to do. I said, “Aren’t you a secular rock and roll station?”  He said, “Yes, on the FM, but on the AM we’re switching to a Christian format.  As a matter of fact, I feel like this is God and I’m putting you on the air Monday through Friday, twice a day, and I’m not going to charge you.”   How many of you know that is God?  I got on the radio and I started teaching the word, and you know I got a hold of the word of God,  back when I was in bible school, I studied night and day and got straight A’s.  So, I was no longer the blind teaching the blind. During Bible School it was like a lifetime worth of Sundays and I put it all in my spirit.

 I was pastoring and on the radio, when I  began to get invitations to go speak at other churches. So, I was speaking at my church, and once a month I’d go out and speak at another church, Then I received more invitations,  Finally, The Lord spoke and called me into the full time traveling ministry.” In 1991, we went into the traveling ministry and we centralized ourselves back in Dallas and worked for Brother Copeland. While working for him, I started going out on the weekends preaching.  Man, I tell you what, The doors began to open and today we preach 50 out of 52 weeks.  Every week we’re ministering in a church or conference somewhere in this country. God has just blessed us.  I said to the Lord, “I would like to do more for you.” He said, “I will open up television for you,” and I replied, " I didn’t want anything more to do with Hollywood.” He let me know that He was not not talking about Hollywood, but using television for ministry.”  I finally got the revelation that Hollywood and Christian television were two different things. I finally submitted to it.  The very next week, the Lord opened up television and I was on TBN in California.

 We’ve been on TV ever since,  I’ve been a guest on TBN many times now, and my wife and I hosted the "Praise the Lord" program for TBN in Tulsa.  We have ministered on TBN, JCTV, Daystar, Lesea, TCT,  VTN and PTN.  I am also a regular host on "Promiseland Live" for PTN.  Last year, I was on every major Christian television network.  Over 200 hours of Christian television for Jesus!  It’s been great getting the word out and going forth with the Good News of Jesus Christ!  Literally, every time I’m on TBN, I’m reaching 90,000,000 actual viewers.   The Lord used what I learned in Hollywood to teach me how to reach millions for Him.  After I'm on TBN, we get mail every day for three months with prayer requests and Praise reports of people who have been healed and set free!  Praise the Lord!   God is still a miracle working God, Hallelujah!