It's Supernatural

Sid: My guest is red hot for the Messiah, his name is Gordon Robertson you see him every day on the 700 Club. And we found out on yesterday’s broadcast that his grandfather was a Senator, a US Senator. And his father of course you know Pat Robertson, Yale graduate, could have written his own ticket with the grace corporation. But God called him into ministry and the rest is history. Now the last thing Gordon wanted to do seeing what effect ministry had on a household, he didn’t want to go in the ministry even though he had prophecies early on. But he had prepared for a business career, he had a fine job in a law firm, then as the story goes he was minding his own business and a pastor that’s a mutual friend of both of ours John Jimenez called him, what happened Gordon?

Gordon: Well I was sitting in my office looking down the main street of Norfolk, Virginia, and John Jimenez called me up and it was a Thursday afternoon. And he said “Gordon I had a dream about you last night” and I said “That’s interesting John.” And he said “In my dream you went with me on my mission trip to India.” Then he added to that “I believe God wants you to go with me on this trip.”

Sid: Stop, the minute he said that what went on inside of your Gordon?”

Gordon: I frankly wanted to laugh at him.

Sid: Why?

Gordon:   Well the concept that God wanted me to do anything at that point in life was sort of “Nah.” It just didn’t click.

Sid: Were you backslidden?

Gordon: Yeah, I was going to church but I wasn’t in any stretch of the imagination I wasn’t a Christian.

Sid: What year was this?

Gordon: It was 1994.

Sid: So how does someone that is a son of a man that’s probably affected as many if not more people of anyone of this generation for the gospel be in a position like that?

Gordon: Well your heart just starts to get hardened is I guess one way to put it. Another is the just the phenomenon of the preacher’s kid and the part of establishing your own identity you tend to rebel against your parents. Like all teenagers go through that but with preacher’s kid there’s also the rebelling against what society is expecting you to do and how you’re expected to act. And so it’s almost like you’ve got to go out there and prove you’re bad.

Sid: Okay, but with John Jimenez you laughed but the question I have for you is why did you even entertain the thought of going coming from a posture like you were in?

Gordon: Because I knew John Jimenez for over 30 years and when I was a child I would go to John Jimenez’s church back when Rock Church was on Lens Avenue. And I knew the presence of God was there. And so when John Jimenez would say to me, I thank God I could God I could not dismiss that. I couldn’t just on his face reject it because of what I knew as a child.

Sid: But you still had a degree of a fleece on whether it was God or not with a Visa.

Gordon: Well that was just my lawyer brain kicking in, because I couldn’t just laugh at him and say “John you’re out of your mind.” I said… my lawyer brain kick in and I knew India and the United States don’t have wonderful relations, they’re better now than they used to be but you still needed a Visa. I knew that the embassy for India was in Washington, DC we were down in Norfolk, Virginia. I found out he’s calling me Thursday afternoon and I found out he was leaving Monday morning; and I just figured with my lawyer brain that there’s no way that you could process the paperwork in that period of time. That it was just going to be physically impossible for this thing to happen so I heard my self say “Okay, I’ll go if you can get the Visa. And 24 hours later…

Sid: (Laughing)

Gordon: He calls me with the Visa so I’m stuck I’ve got to go. Monday morning I find myself on an Air India flight from John F. Kennedy to Delhi.

Sid: Was it so easy to get off that quick from your law practice?

Gordon: No, it wasn’t easy at all. I didn’t have any trials of anything so I had to transfer my case load but I’ve grown up in the tradition that once you give your word it’s your bond so once you’ve said yes you can’t go back.

Sid: Okay, you find yourself in India and then you get the biggest shock of your life because to my understanding you’ve never preached before but what did John say to you?

Gordon: He came to me we were scheduled to be there a week and there was a whole series of gospel tent meetings going on in the city called Rajahmundry. He came to me one day and he said “You’re going to preach tomorrow.” Which kind of surprised me, I didn’t anticipate that that was going to be part of the assignment. I thought I was sort of all on the ride, you know as the young lawyer who they were going to look to me at some point in time and ask me for money.

Sid: (Laughing)

Gordon: That I sort of thought that I was going to be the deep pocket to make all of this happen and my pockets weren’t all that deep at that point in time. So when he came to me and said “You’re going to preach.” I was dumbfounded and I…

Sid: Did you entertain going back on the next plane?

Gordon: Well that was part of the problem there was no airport, and Rajahmundry we flew to Delhi and then flew on to Madras and then took a 12 hour train ride to get to Rajahmundry.

Sid: And every minute of it you were probably thinking “Now I know why I’m not a missionary.”

Gordon: (Laughing) Well you have two reactions and the one is “What can I do to help?” and the other “How can I get out of here?” There really is no in between and you see the disease and the poverty and just horrible living conditions in some areas of India. And you’re either broken by it or it breaks your heart. And I found myself being strangely heartbroken over it. And here people made in the image of God were literally living like animals and what could I do about it.

Sid: Okay, I’ve got to hear about that night you preached for the first time in your life, were there very many people there?

Gordon: We had 15,000 Hindu’s.

Sid: Fifteen thousand, wait a second, Mishpochah how would you like to have that for your first assignment 15,000 Hindu’s. How would you like that Bob and Janie? So how would you like that Gordon, how did it work out?

Gordon: I thought I was horrible, all I did was I remembered some things that my father used to preach and so you know you grow up in a preaching family you’re going to hear a whole lot of sermon’s along the way. And so I just repeated some of the things that I heard him speak and I didn’t know how to do altar calls. At that point in my life I didn’t know anything about Hinduism or what they needed to hear. I had prayed a great deal for the first time in a while “God you got to help me because I’m here and I’m here because John had a dream. So if anything is going to work it’s not going to be because of me.” And I didn’t know how to give an altar call so I just you know spoke and stopped and sat down. To my amazement people started coming forward. I had been at other meetings and this had not happened so I mean there had been earlier meetings during the week where this people had not come forward. And so when people were coming forward I didn’t know what was going on. And one couple came up to me and they said “We are Brahmin’s.” And at that time Brahmin’s never became Christians because it meant that they left everything. They would leave their families, they would leave their jobs, they would leave their community, they would be considered outcasts. But with tears in their eyes they said to me “We cannot help but believe in this Jesus you’re talking about, you’re words have pierced our hearts like arrows,” and they wanted to be baptized. You know at this point and it wasn’t until I saw their eyes and their tears that I finally figured out there was something really going on here that had nothing to do with me. And that God was really doing something.

Sid: Well you felt really good about this but then your buddy John Jimenez had another dream. You’re ready to go home and what does he say to you?

Gordon: The day before we were supposed to leave and get back on the 12 hour train to come back to the nearest airport to fly out of there and he comes to me and says “Gordon, I had another dream about you, you’re supposed to stay and I’m supposed to go home.”

Sid: Have you told this guy maybe you should be drinking more coffee and dreaming less? (Laughing)

Gordon: (Laughing) Well because of what had happened when I had spoken and really because of that Brahmin couple. I mean that was an amazing event and it was not just an amazing event for me it was also an amazing event for everyone else around.

Sid: I’ll tell you what “Hold that thought we’ll pick up right here on tomorrow’s broadcast. Mishpochah I am speaking through the eyes of faith right now but I believe this whole movie “The Passion” was to reach Jewish people. You see if history doesn’t testify to that because this is God’s time to reach Jewish people with the gospel….