Marriage and Ministry

Almost immediately after his powerful experience of conversion, Derek Prince was shipped off to North Africa aboard a troop ship. Speaking of his three years in the deserts of Egypt, Libya and the Sudan, he says he was "discipled in the desert." He studied his Bible with the same diligence and thoroughness he had applied in his academic career. He also discovered the effectiveness of fasting along with prayer.

When he developed a skin condition which was incurable in that climate, he lay for one year in hospital in Egypt. He searched his Bible and prayed for God's help. It was Proverbs 4:20-22 which brought his release:

My son, give attention to my words; Incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes; Keep them in the midst of your heart; For they are life to those who find them, And health to all their flesh.

The Hebrew word for health is marpe, meaning medicine. He accepted God's promise of health to all his flesh and decided to take the Bible as people take their medicine: three times daily after meals. Released from the hospital on his own recognisance, he was totally and permanently healed by this medicine in the deserts of the Sudan.

Also in the Sudan he led his Muslim assistant to the Lord. Ali's changed life caused such a stir in the camp that other soldiers came to Derek, seeking to know more about Jesus.

After three years in the desert, Derek was posted to Jerusalem. There he met a Danish lady, Lydia Christensen, the mother of a small children's home. The family spoke Arabic, and Derek practiced his Arabic with them. At the same time he began teaching himself Hebrew.

As World War II ended, Derek faced a difficult decision. He had not seen his family for more than five years, and his beloved grandfather was dying of cancer. Also, he had a secure, permanent position at Cambridge. The army owed him transportation home to England.

But God had called him to Israel (then called Palestine). If he left, would he ever be able to return? In the end, he took his discharge in Jerusalem and stepped out of the army into full-time Christian ministry in Jerusalem. He married Lydia and became father to the eight girls in the home: six Jewish, one Palestinian Arab, one English.

Together the family saw the rebirth of the state of Israel in 1948 and lived through the War of Independence. Twice they had to flee their home in the middle of the night and walk out into the dark street, to an uncertain future, because of imminent danger to their lives.

In late 1948, as the newborn state struggled for survival, Derek and Lydia reluctantly left Jerusalem. He took the family to England where his parents lovingly welcomed them.

He resigned his fellowship at King's College, Cambridge, in 1949, and for the next eight years he pastored a small Pentecostal church in central London. Most of his members were converts brought in from his thrice-weekly meetings at Speaker's Corner, Marble Arch. Speaking of those days, he says:

We saw many lives changed but only up to a certain point. There were so many people we could not really help. Pentecostals in those days believed that if you were baptised in water, baptised in the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues, your problems were over. But, alas, it wasn't true! It was not until years later, when I came into the ministry of deliverance, that I was able to help Christians to live fully victorious lives.

Derek and Lydia Prince went out to East Africa in 1957 to head a teacher training college in Kenya. Derek also founded a secondary school on the college campus from which thousands of young Kenyans have graduated in the past thirty-five years.

1963 Derek and Lydia immigrated to the United States with their African daughter Jesika, whom they adopted in Kenya. While pastoring a small church in Seattle, Washington, he was confronted by a demonic manifestation just in front of his pulpit. This direct confrontation with the forces of darkness launched his ministry of deliverance. Through his personal ministry, and his audio and video cassettes, he has helped countless thousands to find release and freedom from demonic bondage. His book, They Shall Expel Demons, published in 1998. (Another book, written in the 1980s, Blessing or Curse: You Can Choose!, now translated into many languages, is used by Christian ministers across the world to help to set God's people free from generational curses and bring them into real liberty in the Holy Spirit.)

Stirred by the tragedy of John Kennedy's assassination, Derek Prince began to teach Americans how to intercede for their nation. In 1973 he became one of the founders of Intercessors for America, which has carried this message and ministry to the entire nation. His book, Shaping History Through Prayer and Fasting, which was published the same year, has awakened serious Christians everywhere to their responsibility to pray for their government. Two decades later he would learn that underground translations of this book had been instrumental in overthrowing communist regimes in the USSR, East Germany and Czechoslovakia.

As Derek's teaching tapes circulated, doors opened in many parts of the United States. After pastoring for a time in Chicago, Derek and Lydia stepped out in faith in 1967 into a traveling ministry.

That same year, in New Zealand, Derek saw for the first time that his teaching could impact an entire nation. Those meetings launched an international ministry which has touched almost every part of the globe.

Read on about how Derek began to Teaching the Untaught