Sid: I got a question for you, the prophet Daniel says that the scrolls will be understood in the time of the end. In other words, God’s people will understand the last days and so my question to you is what if much of the scenario you’ve heard in say the Dallas School of Theology approach to end times or even the “Left Behind” series for the end times the premises is are wrong? If that is true will you be prepared for the end times? I don’t have any doubt that the hour is striking midnight. We’re in the last of the last days and I got a hold of a DVD series called “Islam and the End Times” that will change the basis premises based on the Bible of the end times and I have on the telephone Joel Richardson. Joel you were probably taught the “Left Behind” scenario of the end times just like I was and most of the people that are listening. However, you were in an audience of 7,000 people, 7,000 and a prophet was speaking, what did he say?
Joel: Well, first of all thank you for having me on Sid. Yeah, as you mentioned several years ago I was in an audience of 7,000 people and as this prophet was speaking he literally called me out by name. And with a little play on words specifically named my first and last name asked me to stand and among all of the different details of the…
Sid: Well, he did get your undivided attention when he zeroed in on your name.
Joel: Absolutely.
Sid: And he had no way of knowing you or anything about you.
Joel: Had no way of knowing me, I had never met him; had no way of knowing that I was there and then specifically got my attention because he began addressing issues that I had just concluded and extended fast. I was praying about specific issues in my life. He spoke to those issues and then he concluded by saying, “In the days to come the Lord is going to give you a revelation because of your days of waiting on Him and in intercession He’s going to open your mind to the scriptures. And really it was shortly thereafter that I began to get a revelation of many of the things that we are going to talk about today and many of the things that I’ve been traveling and teaching on since then.
Sid: Now, you are what everyone should be, an intercessor because that’s our job as ambassadors from heaven on planet earth. But sometimes when the Spirit of travail comes upon you told me that you’re almost like a light bulb going into electricity, explain that.
Joel: Well, I think Sid, anybody that has given themselves to intercession has experienced those moments of travail where literally the Lord takes a drop of His heart and imparts it to you and you can feel his brokenness for the earth and for the lost and for the broken. And over the years there have been times when during prayer, during intercession the Holy Spirit has come on me and you know this is difficult for me you describe to the unbelievers, but literally I felt electricity surging through my body that is just as real and just as tangible as if I had stuck my finger in an electrical socket and of course the only difference is that it doesn’t hurt. And sometimes this energy would be on me so powerfully in prayer that it would be almost be as if I would believe that if someone looked at me they could see it, you know it’s that strong. And this is I believe moments of impartation where the Holy Spirit is tangibly coming on the human spirit so strong that the body actually reacts.
Sid: Now, I’m going to take you back as a young man; you were raised Catholic; would you call yourself a nominal Catholic or a very religious Catholic?
Joel: We were very nominal Catholics; in fact I was one of the few kids that I know that was actually kicked out of Catholic Church as a kid and my CCD class my Catechism class actually voted me the most likely to end up in jail.
Sid: Then I can understand, well you’re a young man and there was a tent revival going on; you went there, but you went there not for not the reason the evangelist wanted; you went there because it was very very hot; explain.
Joel: Well, a friend of mine, and I were nineteen years old, we were traveling across the country and we had no air conditioning and we pulled over to this grocery store just outside of Memphis and there was a good old fashion tent revival meeting set up in the field next the grocery store. And we had been wrestling saying we need to go somewhere to wash up, we’ve been driving for twenty-four hours and we were considering going into a McDonald’s bathroom and locking the door. I mean, we were trying to figure out how to do this and suddenly we saw the tent revival meeting and I had the bright idea. I said, “Why don’t we just go get baptized.” And you know of course we thought that was clever so we went and asked the preacher if he would baptize us.
Sid: Now, the reason you wanted to be baptized is because you’d get in cold water, is that really true?
Joel: Yeah, I mean we were hot we wanted a bath, we thought hey, free bath.
Sid: Ha-ha.
Joel: And you know by God’s grace we, some of the folks that were there began talking with us and inviting us to stay and we did. And what happened that night changed my life forever.
Sid: Tell me about it.
Joel: Well, again this was a very typical southern holiness tent revival meeting and there was lot of prayer for the sick and many people were claiming to be healed, but you must understand I was a skeptic and if there was one scenario that I thought you could find a Charlatan it would be at a Bible meeting. So I was really watching with a skeptical eye until one gentleman went up and got prayer and you could visibly see that he had his eyes were blue or you know gray, he was blind and they brought him up to the front and the evangelist prayed for him and he said, “Can you see anything right now?” And very hesitatingly the man said, “You know, I think I can; I think I can.” But then he left the stage and this is what got me, he didn’t stand there and make a big show, he didn’t yell and hoot and holler, but he walked off the stage and it was evening by this time so it was dark. And very quietly he walked off into the parking lot and the field amongst the cars and I followed him out there. And as I slowly came up on him, he was kneeling down on the grass and he was absolutely sobbing like a little baby, he was probably sixty years old and he was sobbing like a little baby and I walked up to him and asked him…
Sid: But why did you follow him, what was your motivation?
Joel: Well, I’m a truth seeker. You know I might have been a rebel, but I was curious, I wanted to know if this was real and for some reason I was just drawn to him. I think the fact that he didn’t put on a big show, but said that he was healed caught my attention and so I followed him out there in the field. And you know we talked for a while and he sort of got a grid on where I was coming from and I asked him, I said, “So you are telling me that you were blind and now you can see.”
Sid: Now, how long had he been blind?
Joel: If I can remember correctly, he had been blind since he was a young child.
Sid: So this is a long term thing then.
Joel: Most of his life and he was looking up into the stars, he had his hands up in the air and weeping like a little baby, he said, “Right now I can see the stars, I can see the stars.” And I knew at that moment that this man was not lying, he was not putting on a show for anybody. He went out to be alone and I followed him and I realized that I had a decision to make. And you know with a new attitude I went back into the meeting and I listened to the remainder of the message. And the preacher was speaking on the ax at the root of the tree has been laid and he was preaching a very hell fire type of message and during that time the Holy Spirit came and encountered me powerfully and He spoke to me and He said, “If you don’t completely give your life to me right now then you will end up in hell forever.” He said, “Your entire life is a complete lie.” And my response was, “Absolutely, you are absolutely correct; I know my whole life is a lie.”
Sid: Well, when it came time for the altar call you went up, why did you came in as such a skeptic and not even interested in anything spiritual.
Joel: Well, you know interesting, I think what followed after this admission on my part, “Yes, my life is a lie.” It was really sort of a bartering session where I began to negotiate with the Lord saying, “Okay, Lord, I’ll do this, but I still want to have this in my life and I’ll do this. And very patiently it was as if the Holy Spirit sort of hovered there and folded His arms and just waited for me until about half of me, half an hour later I said, “Okay, it’s done everything is yours, all of the junk in my life, all of the nonsense is gone, I’ll give it up.” I didn’t understand the gospel, I didn’t even understand the cross, I just said, “Lord, my life is completely yours.” And again having no grid of understanding for any of these things I immediately started a three day fast, but I didn’t understand that you aren’t suppose to fast three days without water. So I literally did a three day fast no food and no water and so that was the beginning.
Sid: I did that once, I felt like I was going to die, but go ahead.
Joel: It was terrible, and when I finally had that glass of water it’s hard to describe the water was painful to my throat, I was in absolute agony for the rest of the day, I was just laying there feeling like I was going to die. But yeah, you can do and I was actually working construction at the time so I was out in the hot sun building houses, it was terrible.
Sid: Now, going back to that prophet and there were 7,000 people in the audience and that called you out, called you by name. What did he say what happened in the days to come?
Joel: Well, specifically he said, “The Lord is going to give you a Spirit of Revelation into the Scriptures; He’s going to open up things to you.” And you know of course I didn’t know what that meant, but really over the past several years as a result of my reaching out to the Islamic world, reaching out to Muslims.
Sid: And I can see how you were literally prepared by God living in the Middle East and reaching out to Muslims and even studying Islam. You can see how you were prepared to get this revelation of the end times.
Joel: Right, right exactly. And you know, before I married my wife, this is just I’ll throw this one in, there was actually a woman that was a prophetess that was ministering to my wife and she started prophesying about her future husband. And she said that, “He is going to have significant insight into the end times.
