Sid: Now my guest you’ve seen on the 700 Club; you’re probably familiar with Gordon Robertson. He’s the son of Pat Robertson who founded CBN 700 Club. What you probably don’t know is that he has a grandfather who was a US Congressman and Senator. Gordon you used to visit your grandfather in summers and you would see the difference of his life style and your dad’s lifestyle. Your dad and mom at that time were living on soybeans and praying for the bills to come in for CBN. And at age 5 you had a prophecy that you would one day be on the 700 Club as part of it and what did you think or say at age 5.
Gordon: (Chuckling) Well Sid I thought that I didn’t want to pay the price in being in ministry.
Sid: Actually my notes say that you said something that a 5 year old might say. “Forget it.” (Laughing)
Gordon: Yeah, I didn’t want it I saw how hard it was for Mom and Dad and their struggles with a tiny UHF station in Portsmouth, Virginia. I looked at that cost and you’re right I said “Forget it that’s not what I want.” (Laughing)
Sid: And then you proceed to go into law; you wanted to copy him and you became… you did become successful; you graduated Yale Law School; you became a partner in one of the oldest law firms in Virginia. Then John Jimenez who is now in Heaven started Rock Church tricked you. How did he trick you?
Gordon: Well he called me up I was sitting in my law office. He called me and said he had had a dream about me. In the dream I was supposed to go with him on a mission trip to India. I had you know I was 35 years old and so going on mission trips to India wasn’t exactly on my mind. I was a partner in a law firm. But I did remember John and the early days of Rock Church back in the 1960’s and that John wouldn’t lightly say “God spoke to me; he wasn’t casual with that, when he said things he really meant them.
Sid: And where were you with the Lord at that point obviously you were over your head in business but would you say you were on fire for Jesus at the time?
Gordon: Oh, I was not on fire for Jesus (Laughing) I was running away.
Sid: (Laughing)
Gordon: I guess the phrase nominal Christian; would I go to church occasionally? Yes.
Sid: Good for business. (Laughing)
Gordon: Yeah, had I surrendered my life? No. I wanted to do things my way.
Sid: So what did you tell John?
Gordon: I wanted to say “No” but I couldn’t because I remembered Lens Avenue I didn’t want to okay, how can I get around this was my thought. My lawyer brain kicked in and I knew that India and the United States you had to get a Visa you couldn’t just get on a plane and go. So I chuckled and said “Okay John when are you going?” And he said “I’m leaving Monday.” And it’s Thursday afternoon, and so instead of saying no I say “Okay John if you can get the Visa I’ll go.” Not thinking that there was any way possible that he could get a Visa to be on an airplane Monday morning.
Sid: Now I know that there are VIP services but that… I don’t know of a VIP service that could even do what you just challenged him to do.
Gordon: Well the reason I say he tricked me he had a VIP service already set up.
Sid: Oh, he was one step ahead of you. Now you’re supposed to be the attorney but he had a better attorney working for him.
Gordon: He had it figured out it’s almost like he anticipated what I would say; yeah he had it figured out and as soon as I said “Okay, get me the Visa and I’ll go.” I mean it was like deal done like okay. “Where’s your passport?” and he sent somebody to my home to pick up the passport; and he did one of these counter to counter services with an airplane. I don’t know if you can do that today but in 1994 you could, and the passport service picked it up at the airport; next morning Friday morning 8:00AM they were first in line at the Indian Embassy. And 2 hours later at 10:00AM I get a call from John “I got your Visa.”
Sid: So, did you go back on your word?
Gordon: No, no.
Sid: (Laughing)
Gordon: I kept my word.
Sid: So you’re on a jet going… I assume that it was kind of hard for a busy attorney to even breakaway like that without notice.
Gordon: Oh, I had a lot of explaining to do Friday afternoon.
Sid: (Laughing) Okay you get there and okay that was trick number 1; trick number 2 by John Jimenez he tells you to get ready to preach to 15,000 Hindus, how did you react?
Gordon: That was my first sermon; you know what on the trip you know I’m…
Sid: Was that your first sermon ever?
Gordon: That was my first sermon ever. On the trip I figure, I start figuring what’s the angle you know why am I here and it’s one of those things where you know the Lord works in mysterious ways…
Sid: But how do you… you’ve never preached before, your nominal and that maybe stretching where you are with your walk in the Lord. He’s asking you to stand in front of 15,000 Hindus’ not Christians how did you do it?
Gordon: Well it got me to pray (Laughing).
Sid: (Laughing)
Gordon: Okay, if I’m going to do this and John wants me to do it and he says he’s hearing from the Lord then okay I need to hear from the Lord and I need to hear what the message is. So I got up and I frankly don’t remember what I said other than that I repeated some things that I learned from my father growing up. The thing that got me and let me know God was at work, that this wasn’t anything from the heart of man there was no artifice here there was no angle here. The thing that got me is that I didn’t know how to do an altar call and people came forward for an altar call with no altar call. And a Brahmin couple came up to me and said to me your words pierced our hearts like arrows; we cannot help but believe in this Jesus! At the time I didn’t know that Brahmins never get converted. That here is a Brahmin couple coming forward in front of 15,000 other Hindus to let the world know that they wanted to be Christian. They lost their family, they lost their position, they lost their fortune they were literally losing everything in order to become Christian and that’s when it really dawned on me God’s doing something here this is not me. This isn’t what I just preached this isn’t anything but the power of God on display.
Sid: So it’s 3:00am in the morning; it’s a special holy day where you’re at called the Night of Shiva and at the belief of these Hindus is that demons sleep from midnight to 6:00AM so they have a big party. But at 3:00AM you feel like God wants you to go out and walk and you decide after that experience “I’ve got to get right with God.” What did you say?
Gordon: Well I thought I had jet lag I didn’t realize really what time it was and it was kind of strange that after I’m preaching to Hindus and Hindus are getting converted I decide I need to get converted. (Laughing) I need to ask God for forgiveness for all my years of selfishness and pursuing my own goals, my own career, and not pursuing Him. I did that and felt led to claim the land. So I start walking the streets of Rajahmundry which is it’s an interesting city it translates the “City of the King.” I start claiming the land; I say I claim this land and its people for Jesus. And it’s like I’m Joshua walking the land and claiming it.
Sid: Well God tricked Gordon Robertson he went to India because he had a word for John Gimenez, the Pastor of Rock Church who’s now in Heaven; he tricked him; he got him to go to India. He wakes up at 3:00 am and he realizes that God has woken him up and he goes for a walk and he gets right with God. He was pretty far away from God at the time, but he gets right with God and that same night as he’s walking throughout the streets in India and he goes to a temple and sees Hindus just worshipping gods of stone and cows and things like that that. The same night he has an open vision in which Jesus appears; tell me about that Gordon.
Gordon: Well I’m in this Hindu temple it’s a river of god; a river temple so it’s an open air and the night of Shiva their coming to give the sacrifices in the river. For them it was lighted candles with bananas and fragrant leaves and they were launching them out into the river and the river was covered in them. The Godavari River and just a sea, if you will of these lighted candles if you will, being offered and sacrificed to Shiva and just an amazing sight. And the incense and the drums and you know everything that goes along with Shiva worship. And I felt the Lord’s presence, I saw a woman who was in her 60’s or 70’s and she was bowing down to a stone cow, and she was offering incense and fragrant leaves to a stone cow. And she put that underneath the stone cows’ nostrils so that the stone cow could smell the incense. Something just welled up inside me it was sort of a series of 3 revelations (1) anger “How could you do this, your made in the image of God how could you bow down to a stone cow?” And she was very earnest she wasn’t going through a ritual she fully expected a stone cow to be able to answer her prayer and it was with tears and crying out and asking, asking a stone cow. My first reaction was anger. My (2nd) “You pray to your stone cow I’ll pray to the Living God and we’ll see who answers.” And then the (3rd) reaction I heard a voice behind me saying “No one has ever told her.” And it just cut through my heart that here she was living on earth and she’d never heard the good news; she never heard that “You don’t worship idols, idols aren’t the way to God.” She’d never heard that and it was one of these come away with me moments and I just felt that I need to remove myself from this scene of Hindu worship and I walked up to a rocky out-drop that over looked it all and looked behind me and I had an open vision. I wasn’t asleep, I was fully awake, and I saw white tongues of fire that moved through everything and those white tongues of fire coalesced into a single point of light that I knew in my spirit was Jesus! And that same voice that spoke to me spoke to me again from the light and said “I want this to stop.” And I was seeing the whole sacrifice and I was seeing all of the idol worship and He said “I want this to stop.” And then I got a baptism of love and it was overwhelming, and I felt His love towards the people who were in the middle of idolatry, He loved them unconditionally. I could see through them if that makes any sense I could see that their blood was my blood, that their bone was my bone; that all of the things that I thought made us different differences of religions, skin color, language, all of those things didn’t matter that we were of one blood and that they were really my brothers and sisters. And no one had ever told them. And then it was like I was transported to… I was still there but I was not there and I saw Jesus. I saw Him as a blinding light on the legs of a man standing and it was like I could see back in time. It was like flipping pages in a book where I saw all the sacrifices that had happened at that same temple god going back for 100’s if not 1000’s of years. And then reaching back even further in time. I saw Jesus it was both Him on the cross and Him right there with me and that voice spoke to me again and said “Gordon.” Called me by name, “Gordon if you were the only one to believe (It still gets me to this day 20 years later) Gordon if you were the only one to believe I still would have come for you.” And then the vision ended and I don’t even remember walking to where I was staying but I found myself there at dawn and I spent the next 3 days in prayer trying to figure out what had just happened to me.
Sid: Gordon what affect did this baptism of love have on you?
Gordon: It changed my life; I mean I constantly go back to it and it became the reference point for all that I do to realize… I mean you can hear it in John 3:16 but until you feel it it’s you know “For God so love the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” To realize that even if there was just one that would believe He still would have done it.
Sid: Hmm. You know Gordon it had the effect of giving you such a burden that you didn’t have before that you didn’t have for the lost and especially in India. So you write your wife a letter and you tell her that you’re going to start a mission and what’d she think of that?
Gordon: I think at the time I think she thought I lost my mind; you know I talk to her now about it and what really happened and she said “Well I thought it was okay she sort of put it away.”
Sid: Well that was a little better than the way when your mother reacted when your father sold everything in the apartment and didn’t even tell her (Laughing) because of his strong burden for ministry. So history repeated a little bit but you weren’t as bad as your dad (Laughing).
Gordon: (Laughing) Well we did end up selling everything, we put some things into a storage unit but the cars got sold, the house we were renting and so we got out of the rental agreement and within 3 months I’d moved to the Philippines.
Sid: You also had a dream that really gave you the impetus and it took you to heaven; tell me a little bit about the dream.
Gordon: Well I was wavering I came back from India shaken I’d extended that trip it was supposed to be a week and it ended up almost being a month. Came back and I’m still a lawyer and I’m still a partner and now what do I do? And I had a dream, in the dream I’m in heaven and I’m back with Jesus and it’s wonderful that love is there it’s truly amazing but I hear a noise behind me and I look and I see a long line of Asian faces more than I could number it was in the millions. And I’m in heaven and there’s a gulf very black gulf between me and them and they come to this outcrop and it’s a single file and each one comes and when they reach the top they point at me and said “If… (awe still again it gets me 20 years later) if you had come I would have believed.” Each one saying that again and again “If you would have come I would have believed.”
Sid: You know Gordon I can relate to that I can also relate to the movie “Schindler’s List” where he said “If I could have only had a few more dollars I could have saved more Jewish people… with our Project 77.” I have to tell you most people are not sharing the gospel with Jewish people and for the first time in my life time as a believer some 40 years Jewish people are open to the gospel. God in a dream spoke to me and said “More Jewish people would come to know Him though my book “They Thought for Themselves” ten Jewish testimonies that anything I’d ever done. And it’s true we’re getting so many reports of Jewish people amazing testimonies coming to the Lord; we’re mailing it to Jewish people throughout North America…
