Sid: My guest by way of telephone is David Piper and I’m so blessed that he’s not just over the telephone he’s in the studio. He’s from Tifton, Georgia and David I’m going to take you back to a date you’ll never forget Friday, November 6, 1998, Orlando, Florida, Benny Hinn meeting. How many years were you addicted to crack cocaine?
David: Over 17 years.
Sid: And also to tobacco?
David: Tobacco and everything that was really with that atmosphere and with drug addiction it comes alcohol, well anything that…
Sid: Well how long were you in prison?
David: Actually I did a total of 8 months.
Sid: And what type of sentence did you have what was your worst sentence?
David: My worst sentence was 21 months and I actually did 8 of that 21 months.
Sid: And how long of which was your…
David: I was on 38 years probation.
Sid: I was on 38 years probation.
David: Thirty-eight years probation.
Sid: You were a mess.
David: I was in a mess.
Sid: Why did you even go to that Benny Hinn meeting?
David: I was desperate, desperate for God to meet me at my point of need. It was a life or death situation.
Sid: You told me that your grandmother had something to do with it.
David: Yeah my grandma bless her heart she came to me and she said “Are you okay.” I said “Yes mam.” She said “No your not.”
Sid: (Laughing)
David: I mean you can’t hide nothing from grandma Sid you know grandma’s you know the Lord just give her specifically as close as she is to God just discernment of things. And she just came to me knowing that I wasn’t okay and she said “Well she wanted to go.” And I really didn’t want to go back to the crusade and to make a long story short I took them, my grandma and my grandpa and sister and my dad all the way to Orlando in the car to a crusade. And that Friday morning God met me.
Sid: Tell me…take me there I mean here you are as big a mess on two feet on the face of this earth and you’re up front and Benny Hinn says something. What does he say?
David: He says young man “You in the brown shirt come here.”
Sid: We’re you dressed real respectable?
David: I wore blue jeans and a brown dress shirt but it wasn’t nothing it was casual.
Sid: Alright and so did you just walk up there?
David: No I didn’t I stood there for a moment in shock of that maybe he was not really talking about me because of all of the people that was around.
Sid: Maybe it was the person behind you.
David: Or next to me or whatever and he did not hesitate he looked at his people that work with him and he said “Get him up here now.” And before I could even blink an eye they had grabbed me and literally picked me up and put me on the platform. And there I was in front of Pastor Benny and he said “Don’t move and he went away and ministered to some people and turned around and marched at me like a soldier with two fingers stuck out like pointing at me and said “Father anoint him!” And from that second in time…
Sid: What happened to you though…what happened when he said “Anoint him?”
David: The best way that I could describe it it felt like liquid fire come down my throat into my stomach and explode from the inside out. And in that second my memory of my past was immediately erased the drug addiction, the alcoholism, the tobacco everything was gone.
Sid: How many years of crack cocaine?
David: Seventeen years.
Sid: Oh my goodness.
David: Yeah I had lost everything I lost my family, relationship in the community reputation even though my drug associations didn’t want to hand around me anymore. It gets pretty bad when even the people that you do drugs with had turned their back on you. That’s how bad it had actually gotten.
Sid: But you developed another addiction as you put it an addiction to God and to the Bible. Explain what you mean by that.
David: The most amazing thing that happened you know of course God delivered me that morning you know and set me free you know and He totally changed me and transformed me and burned all of that out of me. But the most amazing thing was that all of those the drug addiction and all of those things that were bad God replaced it with a hunger for Him and a hunger for the word. I could not get enough of the word of God in my life.
Sid: What would you do would you just open the Bible and start reading?
David: I was reading the Bible I was listening to everything I could on TV, on tapes, books, I began spending my lunch hours in Christian bookstores at lunch and just couldn’t get enough of it. I began to look in the paper, like I used to look for bars to hand out in and places to go and dances and things to go like that in the world I began to look for revivals to go to. Every night in the week I found somewhere to be in church where I could you know be worshipping God and before the Lord.
Sid: You mean if there were 8 days in the week you would have been there.
David: I would have been there 8 days in the week and still today that hunger is still there and…
Sid: That’s such a supernatural thing. What is the key? Why? I mean I can tell you as a fact I experienced the presence of God but not to the degree that you describe. Why do you believe that happened to you?
David: I believe that it was because of my desperation and my desperation moved the compassion of Jesus. And I believe God saw me at the point that I was at life or death point. And that morning what began to happen was I began to be convicted by the Holy Spirit of everything that I had ever done against God and I began to cry and repent. And I believe that godly sorrow for repentance and that heart change and God saw that. And you know He’s drawn to out brokenness Sid, you know. God runs to what we run from you know we run from brokenness and He runs to it.
Sid: But I would imagine that anyone you said you were now a new creation you really were if I ever heard of a new creation.
David: A brand new creation.
Sid: Everyone you said to that knew your past I bet they looked at you like “Oh yeah fox hole religion or something.”
David: Well they, they you know I’ve cried wolf so many times you know it was a point where they really had to see me build trust back. I had to build back all of those things I had turned down.
Sid: You know what about your cousin Larry in the hospital tell me about that.
David: Oh my cousin Larry let me tell you what happened. During these for about 2½ months after I had this experience with God and God delivered me from all of these years of drug addiction and He began to…God began to use me immediately I mean the very next day.
Sid: Whoa whoa in the average church they won’t let someone do that because you have to pay the
David: Because the man does not want God to use you that would not stop God from using you you know and immediately God began to use me. And I was working a job going back and forth from work I had even started at this time in a jail ministry where the inmates were even getting touched by God by the same anointing that touched my life. And Cousin Larry had had a stroke and I went to my grandma’s house and he was in the hospital my grandma told me about my cousin Larry. I didn’t know Cousin Larry that well because those drug addiction years I never went to family reunions you know. So the Lord spoke to me that night and told me “If you’ll go to the hospital and pray for Cousin Larry I will heal cousin Larry and use this miracle to expand your ministry in your home town. Now you know that’s a miracle for me to minister in my home town where I committed all of the crimes.
Sid: It’s small town where everyone knows everything (Laughing.)
David: A thousand people you know Poland, Georgia is where it actually was where I lived with grandma at the time. I live in Tifton now but that was Poland. So what happened was I went to the hospital Cousin Larry had been told by the doctors that he would not make it that he would…that he might not even make it through the night. And I walked in the room and there stood his wife and his son and daughter and it was 11:30 at night and they looked at me like “What are you doing here? You know because they didn’t know the new David all they knew was the David that was always in jail and always you know locked up and different things like that. And I said “I come here to pray” and she really looked at me his wife Betty she’s so wonderful she looked at me and said “We’ve already prayed.” I mean she actually you know…
Sid: She wanted you out.
David: She wanted me out of the…she almost like hiding her pocketbook behind her you know because she thought “Here comes this crack addict what’s he want?” You know most crack addicts come around a hospital 11:30 at night they’re looking for some hand out because they’re jonesing in front of them and hit up crack or something. But I came that night because God sent me there. And I told her “God uses me sometimes.” And she said “Let’s pray.” Or other words “Let’s get this over with you know.” We joined hands and when I said the name of Jesus the presence of God came into that room and all of a sudden I opened my eyes and a blue cloud had covered the bed and…
Sid: Now you’re just kind of…
David: No, no…
Sid: I mean you’re just saying it seemed like.
David: I know I saw it with my physical eyes.
Sid: A blue cloud?
David: I bluish mist cloud and even she saw it. And this lady was Southern Baptist and she was not super charismatic enough to make this stuff up and she saw it and she’ll say it today she saw it. And it came in the room and a light, a light a bright light filled the room in seconds it was there and it was gone. And Larry went to sleep and began to sleep and began to snore like a baby. And they said that I said “That at 5:00 AM he would wake up and would be completely healed.” I do not remember saying that?
Sid: How did you know that?
David: They told me.
Sid: I mean how did you know that he’d be healed.
David: There was no way I would have know that he had to be the Spirit of God.
Sid: And what happened at 5:00 am?
David: He woke up and said “What am I doing here?” And he was strapped to the bed because they had strapped him down because…
Sid: What was wrong with him?
David: He had had a stroke and that had caused his mind and his brain to malfunction and he was out of his mind and he didn’t know who he was and they had him strapped to the bed. And the doctors said “Any minute he could have another stoke which would completely take him out.” And they had him…he was pulling the chords out of him, the IV’s and he woke up and said “He said “What am I doing here strapped down?” And they unstrapped him and they checked him out that morning and they found no evidence he had ever had a stroke, totally healed by God!
Sid: Did that blow you out of the water? It must have blown your aunt out of the water (Laughing).
David: It blew all of them out of the water she told everybody about what God had done and how God was using me.
Sid: That sounds like the book of Acts that sounds like the gospels!
David: It’s obviously the book of Acts in operation you know. God’s using the Apostle Paul in spite of all of the things he did. Nothing you can do that God will not use you He’s looking for willing vessels to put their lives out there and say “Lord I’ll be obedient I’ll do anything You ask me to just use me Lord.”
Sid: David you blew me out of the water the other night when I heard you speak and you talked about this angel with body parts we’ll pick up there on tomorrow’s broadcast.
