Will you welcome Keith Green.
Oh, Keith, that sounds like your music coming from the piano over there now,
just a little bit of it.
That was a thrill.
I heard last night about 150 young people came forward to give their lives to Jesus
Christ.
Oh, what kind of an appeal did you make to the young people there?
Tell us what happened.
Well, I just, I really believe in modern day preaching.
There's a real lack of the Lordship of Jesus.
There's a real lack of preaching about Jesus being Lord.
There's a lot of Him, preaching about Him being a financial supplier and a lot of
Him preaching about being healer and a lot of Savior and what He can do for you.
But there's so little preaching about what, taking up your cross and following
Him and denying yourself.
And I've really been preaching a lot.
Well, when I go into, the average audience is probably 60% church kids, you know,
kids that are in a fellowship and going to church.
Some of them may have never really met Jesus.
They're just following in on their parents' coattails or something.
The guy doesn't have any grandchildren, you know.
So they've got to come into that relationship with Him.
And what I do is I present the Lordship of Jesus and the requirements of being His
disciple.
And a lot of people that figured they were saved because they went to church once a
week or that their parents were Christians and they figured they got in just because
their parents were Christians have come to realize that they've never really
submitted to the Lordship of Jesus.
And then, of course, there's always that 10 or 15 or 20% of the audience that's
never even been in a church.
And those people really get ministered to by the cost of following Jesus,
which is everything.
Well, I was at your concert.
You were here in August, I think it was.
Early August, right.
And you were here on 100 Hundred Street live in the morning.
And then that night I went with my teenagers to do your concert.
And I was absolutely thrilled with your ability to communicate.
There was that combination of humor and just fun and entertainment.
But at the same time, oh, the communication that was coming through you
as you sat there and bounced on that piano.
I mean, literally bounced.
He plays with his whole body, not just with his fingers when he plays the piano.
But, you know, your background.
My mom sang with the Dorseys and my grandfather was with Eddie Cantor and so
on.
And I know, you know, even in your background, religiously, your wife,
I remember hearing her grandfather was a rabbi.
But here you have all this communication musically in your background.
Great music.
But now here you are, completely sold out to the kind of music you're doing now,
which is communicating Jesus Christ.
I don't think you know that both my wife and I are born Jewish.
And there's a real movement on the West Coast, especially.
And we have a house ministry there and my wife and I are kind of elders of a house
ministry.
We have about three houses and 20 young people and take people in off the streets.
And we go into prisons and go into ghettos and do different things that I really feel
is lacking.
You know, it's really easy to be a Christian recording artist and a Christian
concert artist and all these things.
But when I go home is when it really gets to be, you know, down to the bottom line,
you know, of getting out on the streets and witnessing for Jesus and doing things
that are so lacking, that I see lacking a lot.
Well, this whole matter of the Messiah.
Now, Wednesday we had a song sung here, Yeshua HaMashiach, Messiah.
HaMashiach.
HaMashiach, Yeshua HaMashiach, Hebrew for Jesus, our Messiah.
Or in Greek, that word Messiah comes through as Christ, but...
Christos, right.
Christos.
But here we have someone who came, who was, as Dr. Ward said, the greatest
Jew that ever lived, Jesus.
The world's oldest living Jew.
Oh, hey, I like... and at this time of the year when we're thinking of the death and
the resurrection of Jesus, the world's oldest living Jew.
Right.
But whatever happened to you, that you came... did you first, say, come to
believe that he was maybe a good man or a good Jew, before you believed that he was
the Messiah, or the Christ, or God in the flesh?
Well, I have even a stranger background, because before I was born, my parents
converted to Christian science.
I mean, they were Jewish.
They were Jewish-born.
Right.
When I was born, I was born into a Christian science family, Jewish-born.
So I have all my relatives being Jewish and being brought up in Christian science,
which is kind of like hot fudge and eggs, you know, together.
It's kind of a strange mixture, you know.
Wow.
You know.
The funny thing about Christian science, it's kind of like grape nuts.
It's not grapes, it's not nuts, you know.
It's not Christian, it's not scientific.
And I was brought up really confused, you know, because I didn't even know I was
Jewish until I was about 12 years old.
And I was brought up with like the teachings of Jesus, plus the teachings of
metaphysics and different things, and all kind of mixed together in a
blender kind of a thing.
Then all my relatives were Jewish, and on the West Coast especially,
the Judaism, unless it's Orthodox, is real just, you know, bar mitzvahs,
funerals, weddings, and yom kippur, and Passover.
You know, that's it, you know.
And so I'd go to seders, which is the practice of the Passover feast and the
dinner with the bitter herbs and the matzah and the lamb and all this stuff,
with relatives.
And I didn't understand what was going on, you know, because I wasn't brought up
really in anything but metaphysics, which was...
Mind over matter.
Yeah, just positive thinking and no doctors and the whole thing, you know.
So when I was about 15, 16, I rebelled against everything that I was brought up
in because it was so confusing, you know.
I didn't really have any kind of a base, a foundation, you know.
Because I was brought up, they were telling me that I really didn't have a
body, you know.
And, you know, although I clothed it and fed it, it wasn't real, you know.
And I was just walking around going, you know, what am I doing here,
you know.
So I went the whole route of the young people today and especially then on the
West Coast, you know, went to the drugs and Eastern religion and meditations and
yoga and all these different things that I figured were going to satisfy me.
And they did for hours or days at a time.
But then I'd always come down and, you know, go, well, that didn't do it.
Because I always knew that when I'd find true happiness and peace, it would last.
And so you were just always searching, searching, searching.
Oh, like crazy.
Yeah.
And I searched with my whole heart.
And in all the Eastern religions and all the cults and all the world religions,
they always gave some credit to Jesus Christ.
The Muslims say that he was a prophet.
The Krishnas say that he was an incarnation of the Godhead in his age.
Yogananda and all these different Eastern teachers said that he had Christ
consciousness.
You know, they always used words like Christ consciousness, Christ this,
Jesus that.
The Buddhists would even say he was a Buddha.
You know, he was another incarnation of God like Buddha was.
And in all my searchings, I saw that all these people were pointing to Jesus.
They're going, well, yeah, Jesus is one of the ways, but we're one of the ways.
And they wouldn't all agree on anything except that Jesus was one of the ways.
And then I looked into the Bible in John chapter 14, I think it is.
Or John chapter 6.
Yeah, it's 6.
Where he says, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life.
No one gets to the Father but by me.
So they all gave him credit and he only gave himself credit.
And I went, well, that kind of eliminates everybody.
They all say he's cool.
And he says he's the only one that's going to get you there.
So I guess I'm safe.
So I started praying to Jesus.
I did this all through intellectual reasoning and laid it out on the table.
And figured it out that if they all gave him credit and he only gave himself
credit.
And they all agreed on one thing, that he was one of the ways.
And he only agreed that he was the only way.
So I figured I had no choice but to go with him.
And then I started praying to Jesus.
Wow.
Was that another trip for you?
In reading your biographical sketch.
You're a child of the 60's, eh?
In some ways.
Yes, and the early 70's.
And you've done all the experimentation.
Whether it's the mine trip, the chemical trip, and so forth.
At what point in your relationship with Christ did it all of a sudden occur to you
that it wasn't the same as the other trips?
In 1973 I started praying to Jesus.
In 1975 I was born again.
I went through an experience called the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.
It was written in May of 1975.
I was baptized in water in June.
And got into fellowship right there.
And since then it's been...
But for two years it was just a trip.
Jesus was another guru.
Yes.
I was reading Bibles and praying, but I wasn't born again.
What made the difference?
What was that crucial moment of being born again?
Accepting Jesus Christ as God.
And accepting the Bible as literally word for word truth.
You mean prior to that time he was a guru.
He was a master, he was a teacher.
He wasn't God in the flesh.
Emmanuel, God with us.
See, in Christian science what was brought up to say that Jesus was God was
blasphemy.
They made a very heavy emphasis on that.
That Jesus was God.
That was the main stumbling block to me.
And I remember one day in the summer of 1975 walking down the street and looking
up and going, All right Jesus, I buy it, you're God.
And everything snapped.
Bang, just like that.
Just like that.
You knew you were born again.
Oh yeah.
And isn't that the test that John says?
That we confess that Jesus is God come in the flesh.
Amen.
And it's interesting, that snaps psychologically and spiritually and
mentally with you.
The only way you can become born again is by your own will accepting Jesus as who he
is, who he said he was.
You can't become born again unless your will agrees to be born again and agrees to
make you born again.
And I was holding out.
I was very stubborn.
I didn't want to be religious.
I didn't want to be traditional.
I didn't want to be classified with the Protestants and Catholics fighting in
Ireland and the Moslems and Christians fighting in Lebanon and the charlatans on
TV and radio that spend 10 minutes preaching and 50 minutes begging for
money.
I didn't want to do that.
There was so much hypocrisy.
If it wasn't for hypocrisy, I would have become a Christian five years before that.
But all the Christians I knew were so busy getting blessed.
They were so busy going to functions and concerts and listening to their Christian
albums and going to their fundraising dinners and all these things.
But the Jehovah's Witnesses would come to my door and spend four or five hours with
me.
I didn't find a Christian that had that time for me.
And I was needing that love and that example.
You mentioned, the way you were brought up, it was blasphemy to say that Jesus is
God.
Well, now, those that came to your door and spent four or five hours teach that
he's some kind of an angel.
Oh, absolutely.
Did you discover that as they would come in with their teaching?
Or how did that come...
It was really a blessing because at the time when the Jehovah's Witnesses would
come to my door and argue with me for four hours,
I didn't want to be part of any organized religious experience.
Therefore, I turned them off as I would have turned Baptists if they would have
come to the door.
Unless they would have been able to show me the truth.
I was looking for the true spirit of Christ.
I was looking for the Holy Spirit.
I was looking for the true Jesus.
It was kind of like in a world of false Jesuses.
Will the real Jesus please stand up, kind of a thing.
I was looking for the same Jesus that died on the cross.
But at the moment that you said, OK, Jesus, you are God, it all came
together.
You knew that your search was finished.
Absolutely.
Oh, blessed is the man who has found the object of his search.
There are some people who take searching itself and they deify that.
They worship the act of searching.
I am a seeker.
But how did you know that Jesus was God?
He proved it to me.
He changed me.
That was the greatest miracle that he could have done.
I could have seen Mount Everest go skipping across the United States and jump
into the ocean.
And that wouldn't have done as much for me as him changing me.
Well, for those two years, like I said, I prayed to him.
And he, through his grace and mercy and patience, wooed me.
Step by step, through the Bible.
Just between my own personal search.
And brought me to a place where I was willing to be a religious fool.
Where I was willing to be a radical.
Where I was willing to be made a complete laughing stock.
Before that, I wasn't willing to go door to door.
Or willing to go out on the streets.
Or willing to go into prisons.
Or willing to go to people and go, do you know Jesus?
I said, I'll never do that.
I wasn't willing to be made a fool for Christ.
And for those two years, he wooed me.
And then, like I said, in April of 1975, I was baptized in the Spirit.
And April, May, right around there.
And got into fellowship with a fine fellowship in California.
Called the Vineyard Christian Fellowship.
Ken Gullickson, his pastor.
Then, right in that time.
And when I received Jesus as Savior and Lord, I still didn't believe.
I believed that he could be God.
But I didn't believe he was absolutely God in the flesh.
And it took about two more months after that.
And he was patient with me.
Now, I don't know exactly what moment I was born again.
It doesn't really matter to me.
But to your friends who have gone through all the kind of religious tripping that
you have gone through.
They say to you, fine, we'll give you a couple more years.
I've learned a lot from Jesus by just sitting down and showing them that I
believe what I'm asking them to believe.
See, witnessing, you win half the battle when you can convince someone you believe.
If you can't get someone to believe something that you can't convince them you
don't believe.
Keith, your pulpit.
When you talk to young people like those, there were hundreds and hundreds there.
But 150 of them came to give their lives to Jesus.
Your pulpit is the piano.
We prayed for your voice.
We just believe the Lord.
How does it feel?
Sounds good to me.
I'm going to ask you, we've got, listen, we've got, I don't know,
maybe five, six or seven minutes through.
Until the one hour break.
We have to take a one hour break today.
Would you just take that time, right up to that break.
And the floor manager will count you to the point where you've got to quit.
And go on over to that piano and just minister.
Give an invitation.
Do whatever you wish, Keith.
And just talking to the young people.
Invite them to use the phones or whatever.
You just feel free because there is Keith Green's pulpit, the piano.
Praise the Lord.
Keith, just minister to us.