Bible Study with David Hathaway - (David's weekly TV programmes)

Our world is in turmoil and distress. Millions of people are in distress. I want to give you a word of comfort from Psalms.

The message of the angels to the shepherds was 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men'. We don't have that yet. Everything about the Bible is a prophetic vision of the future. Isaiah 9 talks about trouble, distress and violence in the Land; this is appropriate for the days in which we live; there is so much chaos. Yet we do not despair, we have a hope in Christ. Isaiah chapter 9 is a very prophetic chapter: part of it was fulfilled in the Christmas story, which we celebrate during this season, but what I want you to understand is, the fulfilment of Isaiah's prophecy will be at Christ's Second Coming.

An interesting ‘window’ on faith is found in Numbers 13. Moses and the whole of Israel had halted on the borders of the Promised Land after their arduous journey. There they were, within sight of their goal, the fulfilment of all God’s promises within their grasp. Surely this was all that they could ask for, the ultimate reward for the sufferings which they had endured both in the last days in Egypt and in the travelling. This was the reason why God had performed all the outstanding miracles both in Egypt and in the crossing of the Red Sea, in order to give them deliverance and to fulfil His promise to give them this land.

The Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah whilst he was shut up in prison, ‘Thus saith the Lord, the Maker – that formed Heaven and earth – to establish it, “Call unto Me and I will answer!”’ Come on! So many pray in doubt… Remember how amazed the disciples were when Jesus cursed the fig tree and it died from the root? Jesus explained to them in Mark 11.22-24, “If you will speak to this mountain (the Mount of Olives) and command it to be cast down into the sea (the Dead Sea), if you speak it and believe in your heart without doubt, what you say will be done!” It’s time today, in the 21st century that we believed that God will honour His Word and do what He says!!!

For me the most important chapter in the Bible on healing is Matthew 8. Jesus came down from the mountain and thousands followed Him. A leper came and said, ‘If You want to, You can heal me!’ Jesus said, ‘I want to!’ and it was done. Then Jesus came into Capernaum and a Roman centurion came to Him, ‘Lord, I have a sick servant at home.’ Jesus said, ‘I’ll come to your house.’ He said, ‘Don’t, I’m not a good man,’ and I don’t suppose he was if he was a Roman centurion! But the officer said the most amazing thing, ‘One word from You and my servant will be healed! I’m a man under authority, an officer in the most powerful army in the world. I have authority from those above, and over those under me. My men obey me! Jesus, I recognise in You the same authority.’

Acts 2.22-36 describes how Jesus was approved of God through the miracles, wonders, and signs that God performed through Him. The Power in the Gospel is indelibly linked with the miraculous. Throughout Jesus' ministry in the Gospels, and then with the disciples in the book of Acts, we read that it was the miracles which was the evidence of the message they preached. In 1994 I was preaching in Khabarovsk, Siberia. The Crusade on the Saturday night saw us under a powerful anointing of the Holy Spirit, and many hundreds crowded into the open-air of the football stadium as the praise and worship team ministered. Then when I made the appeal almost every person came forward, so many, that surely everyone who had come into that stadium, lonely, lost, without faith or hope, and without Christ, found Him that night. Their hopelessness and despair had changed into the glory of the reality of knowing Him who loved us with a dying and undying love.

In June 1991 I was, by a miracle, in Ukraine. The invitation came as a direct approach from the Soviet Union. Ukraine was still a part of the USSR, they didn’t declare independence until 24 August, exactly two months after our crusade. Somehow, they’d heard of me through people I was working with in Czechoslovakia, but they hadn’t really believed I would come… I arrived at their church in the middle of a prayer meeting – and found they had made no preparations at all. But the Holy Spirit undertook. The pastor got on the phone straight away to someone he knew who got us permission to use the open-air theatre in the park. The city administration broadcast advertising for our meetings all over the city through the old Soviet public announcement system – loudspeakers on the lampposts. Even the actual meetings were broadcast this way, including my preaching and prayer for repentance. It all took place that same weekend that I arrived. Miracles of healing were outstanding; I remember five blind people received their sight – and I met one of them many years later in some other city in the former USSR; he simply said, “Do you remember me? In Rovno? You prayed for me, I was blind. I can still see!”

Our God answers prayer – and He works miracles. I know miracles will happen when I pray; I don’t have any question about it. It’s no different from knowing that every morning the sun will get out of bed and show itself at my window. God works miracles every day – but it’s for us to believe that He can, and will in our lives. This is where faith becomes so important.

(Filmed in Kazakhstan, 2025) As I celebrate 75 years in ministry, my job is not yet done, I’m still asking what will it be next time, what will happen this year? I still don’t have enough Power, I’m still not satisfied that God has answered me fully. How much longer must I live to get all the answers? I know that these answers will only come as I continue seeing God in action – that’s why I cannot stop, must not stop, He has so much more to reveal. All I know is that it is step by step by step, and I have not reached the end of the road yet; tomorrow will be more exciting than today.

(Filmed in Kazakhstan 2025) 'For the Kingdom of God is not in word but in power,' (1 Corinthians 4.20). I live not by word, but through the power of God. I also want to share with you Romans 1.16, 'For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.' The Gospel is Good News. This is the key which I want to share with you, all the power of God is in the Gospel we preach. If you want to see miracles, lives changed, the power to work these is in the Gospel. Never neglect the simple Gospel message of Jesus Christ. I have experienced the power of God all my life.

(Filmed in Almaty, Kazakhstan, 2025) 'Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know,' (Jeremiah 33.3, NKJV). God is challenging us to believe for greater miracles - to do the greater works that Jesus promised! Is your faith strong enough? Is mine? Will the wind of the Holy Spirit blowing on the sails of my little boat push me further into the greatness of God? Like Columbus setting out into a vast and unknown ocean – I want to go where no one had ever gone before. I want the Holy Spirit to fill the sails of my tiny boat and take me into a spiritual world unknown and unexplored! Today it’s time that we began to rise up and recognise the power and authority that we have in Jesus’ Name. Power to preach a life-changing Gospel, power to bring healing miracles in order that He might receive the glory, and so that we as ‘ordinary’ people might have something dynamic to demonstrate in our lives! When Jesus healed the paralytic man (Matthew 9.6) He said, ‘So that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth... rise up and walk!’ Today we must become men and women of action to continue the demonstration begun by Jesus, so that non-believers will desire to have what we have!

(Filmed in Almaty, Kazakhstan, 2025) Too many people think when they are advanced in years that they have learnt everything, but I want to challenge you: I am 93, and there is still so much to learn and discover. This year I am celebrating 75 years in full-time ministry. All my life I have wanted to see how far God could/would reveal His Power – if I stepped out in faith. God HAS more miraculous Power available than any living person including Moses, Elijah, David and the Old Testament prophets has YET seen. Even the Apostles and first disciples in the New Testament only tapped the surface. It’s like a sailor setting out into a vast ocean in a tiny boat – the vastness of God’s Power is unbelievable, greater than anyone can imagine. Why has no one ever realised that, with the Holy Spirit, God’s Power is an unexplored ocean? I’m a sailor, and I want the Holy Spirit to fill the sails of my tiny boat and take me into a spiritual world as yet unknown and unexplored! Like Christopher Columbus, I want to go where no one has ever gone before. Now, aged 93, I have not reached the limits of God’s Power HERE, ON EARTH! But the faith driving me is not in my head, it’s in my heart. I want to share this passion with you.

(Filmed in Kyiv, Ukraine | July 2025) I want to challenge you: God has called you! We don’t all have to be preachers, but the fact is that we are saved to live for God. I want to emphasise that God called me, I did not choose to serve God. Jesus said in His own words, ‘You did not choose me, I chose you.’ He called us in order that we might serve Him, and I believe that He called every single born-again believer to serve Him. And once you are called into service you will need the Holy Spirit’s fire and power, because you cannot make it on your own!

The Apostle Paul says in Romans 1.16, ‘I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ for it is the Gospel which is the Power of God to deliver everyone who believes’. All the Power of God, through the Holy Spirit, is in the preaching of the Gospel! It is the Gospel that is the Power of God – and this Power is in you! It’s not an emotion. When the Power of God falls, when the Spirit of God comes on you, you will fall on your knees, on your face and cry out to God.

'For God called you to do good, even if it means suffering, just as Christ suffered for you. He is your example, and you must follow in his steps. He never sinned, nor ever deceived anyone. He did not retaliate when he was insulted, nor threaten revenge when he suffered. He left his case in the hands of God, who always judges fairly. He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed. Once you were like sheep who wandered away. But now you have turned to your Shepherd, the Guardian of your souls.' ( 1 Peter 2.21-25)

There are three visions, three perspectives you need to have if you want to work for God: a vision of God, of the world and of what God can do through you. Most of you are younger than me, so I want to talk to you as a father, grandfather! I want to show you what vision can do in your life. If you do not have a clear vision and purpose, you will achieve nothing for God. I want to give you a clear vision for your future, of what God wants to do, and I want you to live with this vision for the rest of your life! ‘Where there is no VISION the people perish!’ (Proverbs 29.18, KJV). Only the King James Version is so clear, so blunt. In other languages, in other versions, it’s watered down. But without that VISION of who God really is, you are spiritually DEAD! The Power and the Authority that I have only come through the VISION of KNOWING who God is!

This is the prophetic challenge, God is saying to us in Haggai 2.3: ‘Who is left among you that saw this House in its first glory – and how do you see it now?!!’ This is the challenge to the Church and to our nations: something HAS to happen to dramatically CHANGE us. There have been times in my own life when I have had to experience this dramatic change and transformation. It was never a change of direction. My staff will tell you that what I wrote when I was fifteen in my magazine ‘The Evangelist’, is EXACTLY what I say now. What God put in my heart then, is EXACTLY what God is fulfilling in my life now. So the direction has never changed – but I have had to have the renewing. Without those times when God has stopped me, put me in a prison, laid me aside, cancer, or any other thing – there has had to be that dramatic realisation in my life of the need of change. God is today saying to the Church EXACTLY what He was saying here to Israel through the prophet Haggai! I want to challenge you, every one of you – who is there still here in Britain (or wherever you are) who saw the Glory of God in this land, who saw the Power of God in the churches, who saw the repentance, who saw the demonstration of the Holy Spirit? I would say to you, what do you see now? Desolation. You don’t hear a call to repentance, you don’t see the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. I would say to you – the Glory has gone. And God is saying in this Scripture in Haggai, the Glory has departed from the House of God! WE are the House of God. And the Glory has gone! We have got to bring back the Glory and the Power into the House of God!

Where is the Power in the Church? I am concerned that the Church has lost sight of the power and effectiveness of the Pentecost experience. We all need to be empowered by the Holy Spirit. The Christian who wants to be effective in ministry first needs to be filled by the Spirit. The more I study the life of Christ, the more I realise the influence and the Power of the Holy Spirit working in Him, in His life and ministry. Just as the disciples had to wait in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came before they could begin their ministry, so Jesus Himself did not begin His powerful public ministry until after He had received the Holy Spirit! Matt 3.16- 17; Mk 1.9-12; Luke 3.21. That same Holy Spirit who was in Christ should be in us! And the Holy Spirit who has begun working in us, will continue until the Day Christ returns!

'Be strong and of good courage, and do it; do not fear nor be dismayed, for the Lord God – my God – will be with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you, until you have finished all the work for the service of the house of the Lord,' (1 Chronicles 28). The hunger in my heart, which has driven me all my life, is still the underlying reason for the whole vision which burns so deeply in my heart today: the desire to see the Power of God poured out today in greater measure than at Pentecost!

"God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? Behold, I have received a command to bless; He has blessed, and I cannot reverse it," (Numbers 23.19-20). Balaam was paid by Balak to curse the people of God. But this is what Balaam said, “God is not a man that He should lie, neither a son of man that He should repent (change His mind) – what He said, shall He not do it, and what He has spoken will He not make it happen?!” God cannot lie, He cannot change what He has said. And in the next verse Balaam says, God has blessed, no one can change it! When you have learnt power with God, God will begin to bless your life, your home, your family, your finance, your job – everything about your life! God will bless you. No one can change it, no one can reverse it – your life is under the power and blessing of God!