A New David Wilkerson Biography

In case you did not know there is a new David Wilkerson biography just out (a few days ago)written by his son Gary.

Look at Amazon.com for more info:

http://www.amazon.com/David-Wilkerson-Cross-Switchblade-Believed/dp/0310326273/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1409405593&sr=8-1&keywords=david+wilkerson

I just bought it and started to read it. It is a somewhat revealing portrait that Gary gives of his father (such as his personality and inner life and other aspects that listeners and readers of rev David did not know). One thing that puzzled me was that Gary stated that his father throughout his life had recurring doubts regarding God's love for him something that never did show up in his preaching and teaching..
Besides that, the book is really good and tells the fantastic story of a man of God.

Sincerely Magnus

It,would be interesting to read that.

I read The Cross and the Switchblade when I was a teenager, and was especially struck by something he had put in the book about the conversions of the gang members in New York. He said that many who made a profession of faith ended up backsliding, but that the ones who received the baptism in the Holy Spirit rarely did. As a kid in a Presbyterian church, I couldn't get my arms around that one. It kept me in a ponder.

Not long after that, I decided to actually attend the Bible school mentioned in the book in Springfield Missouri. I was intrigued by that baptism comment and I knew the Assemblies of God believed in it. After being in Springfield for less that 10 days, the brothers "prayed me through" as they would say, to a phenomenal Spirit Baptism. And I guess I am in some small part a testimony to his legacy. 50 years later I'm still here- loving God and speaking in tongues. Can't imagine any other life.

But while I was there, He came to speak a couple times. I don't know what I was expecting, but his messages and demeanor were cold and harsh. I had expected loving warmth but I guess that was not his style.

Not to detract from his ministry and incredible legacy, but sometimes there is a wall with great leaders that is upsetting when you have the chance to meet them.

"Life is hard and people are faulty," my mother used to say. David Wilkerson would probably agree. Let's read!

Good word, Noah!

An old evangelical phrase, used by many, is that (preachers) are to "Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

One can see how both ministry gifts are necessary, and it would be short sighted to think all preachers should be one or the other!

God certainly knows how to bring the best out of His men... and women, and to work with the personality elements we give Him.

I have no quarrel with Brother Wilkerson, he was indeed as Rev_enue posted, a great servant of God!

Gary Wilkerson writes this concerning his father which helps to clarify what I meant with the above:

At his vulnerable times, my father wondered whether he was loved by God at all. He didn't wonder why people suffer (And his family suffered as much as any. Through a genetic anomaly, my mother, both sisters, a niece, and now a nephew all have faced serious battles with cancer.). Very simply, my father wondered his whole life whether God loved him. It was a question he kept mostly to himself. Growing up, he had absorbed some of the traumatizing aspects of a theology that leaned toward works and legalism and sometimes fear. Although doctrinally he knew he was free in Christ, something in him still made him feel he had to work hard - that nothing he did was enough, that more was required to fill what was missing in his righteousness in Christ.

My uncle Don, who for years worked alongside my dad in ministry, observes, "David had a lot of grace for other people, but he wasn't always able to appropriate it for himself."

[---] The revelation of my father's lifelong struggle was stunning to many. "I preached a lot about the love of God nowadays, and it was David who had the greatest influence on me for that," says Bob Phillips, who copastored with my father at Times Square Church. "It's based on what I learned from him in his years as a pastor, not just from his preaching but from how he believed and lived." Like so many others who worked closely with my dad, Bob never would have guessed this struggle to be my father's deepest.

From the outside, those who understood my dad's early life would say he never stood a fighting chance. Yet, characteristic of my fahter, a few decades ago he set himself on a journey to correct things within himself. At that time, in the eighties, he was still busy traveling the world as an evangelist. Yet his own soul was dry; he had become weary of preaching the same messages to crusade audiences. Between those events, he began reading a stack of books given to him by a discerning friend, author and preacher Leonard Ravenhill. These were classic works that had endured the centuries, most of them written by Puritans, names many of us have never heard of. As my father dug into those treasures, his heart opened to a new revelation of Christ. Grace awakened in him, coming alive in a way he had never known. The old books stirred him once again to study the Scriptures cover to cover, this time with a new understanding of the gospel. As he explored the full extent of the finnished work of Christ, he experienced joy.

Toward the end of his life, my father confided to me that he still struggled to know whether he was loved. He couldn't escape completely the emotional cobwebs, but he was seeing more and more clearly the work that Jesus had done for him. In my last conversation with him, he told me how deeply he had probed, how he had scoured every page of every writing he could find on the glorious subject of God's covenant grace. And yet I could see in his eyes there was a yearning for more. There were things he still wanted to know about the depth and breadth of Christ's finnished work. That's when he urged me to dig deeper in my own search on the subject, not to be satisfied but to go farther. It was as if he was saying, "I got a late start. I want you to have it better. I want my grandchildren to have it better. Don't ignore this truth, If you catch it now, it can save you years. Son - do you see?"

David Wilkerson: The Cross, The Switchblade, And The Man Who Believed pp 28-30

Sincerely Magnus

For those who has not yet bought the new biography of David Wilkerson let me give you an appetizer:

Gary Wilkerson writes regarding the vision his father recieved in 1973:

1973, MY DAD BEGAN to have stirrings he'd never felt before. He sensed a need to sequester himself in prayer to be able to hear from God. This was the beginning of his most controversial book, The Vision. True to form, Dad did't disclose to us what was going on inside him, but we could tell something was happening. My brother Greg, and I would be in the living room with Dad, maybe watching a sports event, when we would notice him get up quietly and slip into the master bedroom, closing the door behind him. Years later Dad described to me what he was experiencing.

Off my parents' bedroom was a spacious master bathroom. He would go in, locking the door behind him. Then he simply lay on the floor, prayed, and listened. The first day was somber. Dad was overcome with a heavy angst. The emotions he felt seemed to come from outside himself, and they kept coming all day long. Dad emerged from his bedroom that day depressed. Day after day, he would lie on the bathroom floor and listen. Soon images formed in his mind - not daydream images but clear pictures he could'nt have imagined.
What is that, Lord - a building? He was shaken.

"I don't know what what's happening," he let on to us occasionally. "This is all new. I don't get these kinds of messages from God." His conversations with the Lord become more pointed. "Take this away from me, Lord" he prayed. "I can't bear to look at it." He had the kind of soul-shattering experience we imagine happening to biblical prophets, such as Jeremiah in the Old Testament or John in Revelation. It continued for two or three weeks.

David Wilkerson: The Cross, The Switchblade, And The Man Who Believed pp 170-171.

Sidewalk,

You saw something many others did too and confronted him on. David Wilkerson talks about his struggle with anger in several of his sermons here on SI. I don't know the timeframe but there was certainly a time where that changed. He talks about the promise he was given to really know grace but that much of his early ministry was law.

The last time I saw David Wilkerson was in 1966, during my second year in Bible School. After that year I never went back- was drafted and sent to Vietnam. I lost track of David's ministry and life- actually I became more acquainted with Len Ravenhill as he and Martha were good friends with some good friends of mine. (As an aside, Len and my friend Dick corresponded often with long discourses, written in longhand, and I wonder what ever happened to those letters. It would be interesting reading!)

But back to David Wilkerson- sometimes these guys get locked in a tower of fame and admiration that is very damaging. Now I don't know any details about David, but I have seen other men who are bombarded with words of praise and admiration to the point where they have no real friends, just groupie types who cherish being a famous person's friend. They are unable to give them the tough stuff they need to hear.

In the case of Dick and Len, they met before Len became a superstar. (He would hate that I wrote that!) They would wrangle and challenge each other like friends should, and that was good for Len. He too was a man hard to get close to, intense about everything, teaching in quips even in short personal conversations.

One time he poked my friend in the chest, where he read "University of Minnesota" on the shirt. My friend was a highschool junior, and Len said:

"It'll fill your head but it'll never fill your heart!" True enough, but no conversation occured to get it in perspective. John, my friend, had no idea what was on the shirt he was wearing! He was not, and is not a believer anyway.

All of which just to explore the notion that famous people often have skewed interactions with other people and need a little tolerance for that. Just when you might be ready to step into a meaningful dialogue, their handlers move in to take them someplace more important than where they are to meet someone more important than you.

Some would be better off with less fame and more real friends, in my opinion...

Concerning Leonard Ravenhill; Gary Wilkerson writes the following:

Another figure relocated to Lindale who would serve as a great friend to my dad: Leonard Ravenhill. Since the early days of Teen Challange, Leonard had made immense contributions to the body of Christ, especially in his study of revival. In the next few years, he would become as close to a mentor as my father would ever have. Like my dad, Leonard became a respected elder statesman in the community. Young leaders paid him visits, thinking, "What a treasure to get a few minutes with this man." Three or four hours later, those guys would leave exhausted from the deepest, most intense spiritual challenge they'd ever had. Leonard was loving and respectful, but he could come across as hard. "You needed to have your ducks in a row pretty quickly," Craig Smith remembers with a grin, "because the sword could come and suddenly it's of with your head!"

"How much do you pray?" Leonard would ask some young mentee.
"Two hours a day," the guy would answer. "Then you must pray three." Yet the emphasis was never on something measurable; Leonard was always addressing a person's passion for Christ. He was a tremendous scholar on the cross and on the sufficiency of Christ, so the things he offered weren't legalistic; the were reverent. And there was an authority in what he said, because it came from his own passionate devotion. In that sense, he and my dad were cut from the same cloth.

Yet my father revered Leonard for another reason. In his friend, Dad saw what generations of his family had looked for but never found. Leonard embodied the holiness values that my dad's parents had held dear, only without the legalism. He had a sober seriousness about life in God that attracted my father, but he also laughed and had joy.

My father ended up seeking out Leonard the way young guys sought Dad. "I need to go ask Leonard about this," he would say, grabbing his car keys, or "I want to find out what Leonard's studying." It was a rare thing for my dad to be the mentee rather than the mentor, but he knew Leonard was a bit farther up the road in some important ways.

David Wilkerson: The Cross, The Switchblade, And The Man Who Believed pp 199-200.