I want to start my testimony from the beginning. I have two bullets. Not in my leg, not in my arm, but in my head! From a 38! Now I know we have some men here that know what guns can do. God left them there so I can stay a miracle. I’m registered a miracle at Denver General Hospital. Shot point blank range in the back seat of a car, and then stabbed 17 times! Bled to death. Died. Amen?
Well, if somebody says, “Well, he’s dead. We’re not living in the book of Acts. You’re just going to stay dead!” But thank God for somebody that believes the Lord. Somebody that my wife said didn’t doubt. Somebody that said, “Wait a minute, God. Thou art God! Nothing is impossible with You, Lord! This man is dead.” I needed someone that could look into the supernatural and call upon a miracle.The Bible says in Acts 26 verse 8, “Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?” Why should that be incredible? Why should you doubt that? God can raise me from the grave, pronounced by man in Denver General Hospital, which is known for their success in trauma cases.
I know we have a lot of people that talk about when they had a near death experience they saw some light and they saw all of this, and cousin Henry and Uncle Ben and Aunt Susie came and led them to the light, that’s a lie! Take it from somebody that’s been down that road. I have true experience. That’s a lie.
If you die without God, you won’t see no light, brother. If you ain’t dying in Jesus, you’re going to see death, darkness, fear and torment. Because fear brings torment.
See, when I got shot I was doing a drug deal with some Colombians. So I wasn’t saved. I was brought up and raised in the church in the nurturing of the Lord. Got filled with the Holy Ghost at seven years old. But you got to know the Lord. You can’t get in to heaven on your grandma’s coat tails. Amen? You can’t get into heaven cause Mama is a good prayer warrior. Mama’s good prayer helps, though. But you need to know God for yourself. See Mama praying for you is going to hold you until you experience God for yourself. It’s a personal one-on-one relationship. God don’t have no priests and no intermediates now, it’s you and Him, face-to-face, up close and personal. He says, “Come talk to Me. Look into my eye. Come talk to me, brother. Let us reason together. If you have any doubt, any misunderstanding or misinterpretation, come talk to me. You don’t have to wait. I don’t care what time of the day or night it is. It is all the same to Me. When do you want to talk about it? The only thing that is holding you up is you. My door is wide open. Get ready for an answer. It may not be the answer that you want, it may not be the answer that you like, but it’s going to be my answer. And if you’ll receive it, you’re going to grow, you’re going to prosper, you’re going to be blessed. But you got to talk to Me. You can’t wait till Sunday to hear the message, but don’t talk to Me all week. That don’t work.”
God is love. Love needs to be nourished. Love likes to be held. Love likes to be ministered to. Love likes to be paid attention to. Amen? He says, “Hey, talk to Me.” The Bible says God is love. You don’t ignore love. Something wrong when you do all the loving. It’s kind of one-sided. We want to be balanced. We want to have sober minds.
See, God had so much love for me. When I left from under the blood covenant from my family like the prodigal son, I said, “Mama, 13 years is enough.” My father said, “You know what? Go. You don’t need to come church no more. Because you need to know the Lord for yourself. I need to know in my heart that you know God. You’re going to meet God out there. Wherever God decides to meet you, He’s going to meet you. And when you meet Him, then we ain’t got to preach to you no more. We ain’t got to be sending up prayers to you no more, because when you meet God, brother, you’ll act like us. You’re going to be dragging your kids to church. You’re going to be on your knees praying for that wayward son and that wayward daughter. You’ll be fasting. When you meet Him, then you are going to have understanding why you and your mama are the way we are. But since you don’t know Him, you cannot perceive or understand the things of the Spirit. So go. Go out there.”
I thought I was being blessed! I said, “Well, the sentence is over. I got a pardon.” And I ran party-hardy, hallelujah. Amen? But there’s nothing in that world. It’s all spontaneous. It’s all physical. If it don’t feel good, don’t do it. But if it feels good, do it. It’s all feelings. Believe me, I tried it all: Heroin addict. I sold heroin. I went right to Thailand. I went right to the poppy field. Forget about the middle man. Brought heroin. It said in a newspaper clipping, they called me the most vicious pimp in the state of Hawaii. Had women working in Tokyo, women working in Copenhagen where prostitution is legal. They stopped me when I was traveling around the world eight times in less than a year. When I bought my Rolls Royce I was so drunk drinking Courvasier. I brought it in with two prostitutes in a brown paper bag. Paid for it cash. Drove down the street drinking Courvasier, looked at the Mercedes Benz place and bought a Benz with the change.
But God…! See, God will give you all that! But when you experience God it has no substance. See when I got shot, I still had those things. See, God didn’t take it away. He said, “I want to show you power. I want to show you dunamis power.” The Bible says that when you receive the anointing, you will have power. See some of us get to see the power, but we don’t receive the power. Amen? God says, “I want to show you the dunamis power in the anointing.”
So I fly from Japan living high on the hall, thinking I got everything under control. I had just been to Hawaii. I had several penthouses from Waikiki all the way to Hawaii Kai. And this one penthouse I stayed in (the Yacht Harbor Tower) was under surveillance. I was under surveillance for over two years. They were trying to get me for extortion and a prostitution ring and all this kind of criminal activities. I flew to Alaska. I used to try to get them to lose my trail. Flew to Alaska, flew to Japan and then go to Copenhagen. And the Honolulu police department and the IRS got so tired of trying to figure out what I was doing, they decided to break into one of my penthouses when I wasn’t home.
But God…! God don’t look at all that stuff. God sees right through you to the Plan. God sees right through your flesh to the calling because His Word will not return to him void. Do you know that the devil got to come to God and ask permission to do anything? I don’t care what the devil does! He cannot stop the Word of God! He cannot stop it! The gates of hell will not prevail against you!
And my grandmother used to look at me and she just didn’t doubt in her heart. And my mother would be in church and say, “Can you pray for my son Isaiah?” And they’d say, “Well, it’s been 25 years, he’s still unsaved, my God! Maybe he’s a reprobate, Mrs. Reed.” She said, “No, God promised me. We just going to wait on the Lord and believe God.” And they would read in the paper, “Man. The most vicious pimp in Hawaii.. Ain’t that your son? The one we’re praying for?” She believed the Lord. She did not doubt.
So I fly to Denver and going to make this deal with the drug dealers, me, the Cubans and the Colombians. They were going to sell black tar heroin and cocaine, and I was going to import the China white heroin from Thailand and we were just going to get filthy rich. And we had a million dollars in cash, I was just “blessed!”
But God was already working. The Holy Ghost was already doing something. Even then. My associate and partner who watched my bag and would take a bullet for me all of a sudden didn’t want those things anymore. He said, “Man, we got enough money. I want to retire.” I said, “Man, you crazy!” He said, “You know what your problem is? You’re greedy! You never have enough. I’m going to retire.” I said, “OK, let’s make this last deal and next year I’ll retire.”
God ain’t going to wait for your next year. How many know that? God ain’t going to wait till tomorrow. Get saved right now, Amen? Right now! Don’t even wait for me to get finished preaching. Get filled with the Holy Ghost right now. God doesn’t need you to wait. He needs you to believe and obey.
So I figure, “Wow. Well, that means I’m going to get more money.” So I wanted to do this deal. I knew these guys. We had done business before. I knew their children. We just finished eating crab and lobster like we were big old gangsters. Everybody had their shoulder holsters on, the automatic weapons, body guards, jewelry. We was feeling like Scarface. But I didn’t know they had a plan for Scarface, bless God.
So I get in the car to pick up several hundred thousand dollars to finalize the deal and up pops a 38 automatic. Boom. Right in my head, right here. All this is reconstructive surgery. It took two years to get my face back right. I had plastic in my jawbone. The destroyed it.. took it all out… bam. My body started to swing. I guess I was going into shock, and I ended up grabbing the barrel. The barrel was right in my hand, boom! The next bullet went right through my face throughout all the upper part of my mouth, in my throat, through my throat, in the back of my spine. Bam.
Then they took out their knives, stabbed me 17 times in the upper part of my body, cracked my skull, the knife went through my head, through my skull, through my ear, in my neck, in my back, in my side, threw me out of the car in the alley with the money in my pocket. They wanted to send a message into the street that they were not be played with.
And there I was. The Rolls Royce couldn’t save me. The Mercedes Benz couldn’t save me. Those things are nice, but they are not God. They cannot talk and they cannot answer prayer. The diamonds and the gold are nice, but those things couldn’t help me then.
How many know that you’re going to come to a place where you are going to really need to know that there is a God that still raises the dead, heals the blind and cleanses the lepers. That still saves souls and still wants to talk to you.
My wife was on her way to Texas. She says she felt “something happened to Isaiah.” A lot has happened to me. And my blood is spilling out in the alley. And I remember, as my soul was surrendering to death that I could hear my father say, “You know what’s going to happen to you? You’re going to end up in an alley in a puddle of blood by yourself.” He was prophesying to me. And it came to me, just like that.. and I said, “Man. I am too young to die! I’m really not all that bad! Why do I have to die. Why do I have to go through this? I was selling heroin and cocaine. I had women working on the street… but I’m not that bad.” Justification is in the flesh. God was calling on me to change.
When you die, your soul surrenders. This is just a shell, the real you is on the inside. And when your shell stops working, your soul got to go somewhere. You can designate and make your reservations now. If you don’t have your reservation made, reservations have been made for you. It’s called Hades or Sheol. There’s a place for you there.
And as my soul was surrendering to death and I was laying there, my mother knew it in her spirit. She had always known that one day they would call her. See, she had been praying for me. You know that I had never been arrested? And when they tried to arrest me in Hawaii, the police department and the IRS got put in jail. A hedge was put about me. As a matter of fact, I owed the IRS a hundred plus thousand dollars, you know God paid it? They sent me a waiver saying “You don’t owe us nothing.”
Death had its hands on me and God said No. “Yeah, but the Book of Acts is over with!” But God’s not over with. Just because the Book of Acts ended, God didn’t end. The Holy Ghost didn’t end. Jesus didn’t end. Jesus said, “I am still Jesus whether you believe it or not. I’m still the Lamb of God.”
Even some people back in Jesus’ day when John was in prison and they said to Him, “Are you the Messiah?” He said, “Go tell John that the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the blind see and the dead are raised.” The Lord is telling you today. “Go tell the church the dead are still being raised from the grave. Go tell them, if they have any doubt that I’m still raising the dead. I’m still dealing in every situation and circumstance.” And he left the bullets in my head to prove it.
And when they told my mother and said, “He’s gone.” She said, “Not my son.” They said, “He bled to death on the street, as a matter of fact, he was dead on arrival. There was nothing we can do. His head is gone. We deal with shot guns all the time. He is gone, he is finished.” She said, “Let me pray for him. I have heard your report. But I got a report right here.” Whose report are you going to believe? She says, “I got a report too. Let me read you my report card.”
And as she began to pray she said, “God, thou aren’t a man that you should lie. Neither a son of man that you should repent. You have spoken it to me in my wayward hour. You spoke to me about this boy before I brought him forth from my womb. God I gave him back to you. I wasn’t able to raise him right, I wasn’t able to keep him. I am not able to do anything, for without You I am nothing. But I took this child, the firstfruit of my womb and I gave him back to You, God. But now the devil tells me he’s died in sin. He’s on his way to hell. That’s not the promise You told me. You told me he was going to be saved and sanctified. God I got an evil report, God. I’m fighting with the death angel, God. He has his soul, God. God I am in a struggle right now. I need Jesus. Oh, Jesus. I need a whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord. I need the Lamb of God. I need the Lily of the Valley. Oh, I need Jehovah Jireh. I need the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. I need a miracle working God. I need nothing less than a miracle, God. I don’t need you to touch him and just let him die. I don’t need you to bless him before he goes to hell. I want you to raise him up.”
They said, “Mrs. Reed, we got vital signs.” She said, “Thank you, Jesus.” You can call life back into the body with a bullet. They had me cut open. They had me laying on the autopsy table.
They said, “Mrs. Reed. We can’t promise you that we can even keep him the next hour.” She’s in New York, by the way. This was a long distance call. Reach out and touch somebody. This ain’t a phone commercial. This is God’s commercial. Do you know man tried to steal the glory? They said, “We can’t hold him.” My mother said, “You just leave him alone anyway! You pronounced him dead! What you mean? You can’t hold him? God’s going to keep him. As a matter of fact, you just push him on the side. Amen? Let the real doctor work on him. I’ll be there. My son’s going to be alive when I get there, whenever I get there.”
And when my mother got there, here come the geniuses. They said, “Well, Mrs. Reed, we can’t remove the bullets.” She said, “That don’t surprise me. God put them there.” Only God can remove them. They said, “Since we can’t remove the bullets and one is in his brain, he’s going to be a vegetable for the rest of his life.” They had me in a plastic bag because my body was all full of stuff and they had to leave me open because every now and then they had to massage my heart. Pneumonia set in, so they had to put me in a sanitary environment. They said, “Not only that, but the other bullet is in his spine and he’s going to be paralyzed from the neck down so you’re going to find a facility that will take care of your son.”
She said, “My God! Can you all leave the room, please? I need to talk to the Lord. I haven’t read your evil report when you called. I get here, it’s been a long flight, I’m tired. My mind is weary. My husband wants to know about my son. And now you’re telling me he’s broken and a bust up vessel. Can you all leave the room?” She said she walked in there and said, “Lord, you have been faithful to me, God concerning this man. You have never failed me. You have answered all of my prayers concerning my son. But God, I’m getting weary. You have protected him. If he gets up, I know you’re going to raise him up and he’s not changed, then you keep him now. Because I might not be able to make another episode with my son.”
I thought, “Why did you say that? Wait till I get raised first! Don’t leave me in that condition. Paralyzed and vegetable, and you’re getting ready to tell God forget it! No!” But I understood my mother’s heart. He doesn’t listen to your counsel. But God is going to do what’s best. Whether you agree with it or not. And God just restored me.
The doctors said, “Well, your son can’t leave the hospital till he walks on his own power.” My mother said, “Really? We’re going to have a prayer.” She called a couple of pastors in Denver. They came over and laid hands on me. The next day I was up. “Hey, Doc! Look! Can I go now?” I didn’t know even all this was going on, so I told the doctor, “Man, you did a good job. I feel really good. I’m going to buy me a porsche.” He said, “No need you buy me a porsche, because I didn’t do it. God did it.”
Isaiah continued to live in sin for three years after God raised him from the dead. But we have a faithful God. He got a hold of him and now he is preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ to the glory of God!