Rodney Howard-Browne - Seeing Jesus as He Really Is

S EEING
J ESUS
A S H E
R EALLY I S

Seeing Jesus As He Really Is previously published as The Man Behind the Myth Copyright 1999 by Rodney M. Howard-Browne

Published by World Publishing, Nashville, TN 37214 www.worldpublishing.com

All rights reserved under International Copyright Law. Contents and/or cover may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without the express written consent of the Publisher.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked AMP are taken from The Amplified Bible, Copyright 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation Used by permission. www.Lockman.org.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

ISBN 0-529-12079-8

Printed in the United States of America

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S EEING
J ESUS
A S H E
R EALLY I S

RODNEY M. HOWARD-BROWNE

CONTENTS

I count it a privilege to write this Foreword. Rodney Howard-Browne is, in many ways, to our generation like Martin Luther was to his. What Luther gave to the church with regard to doctrine, Rodney has given a way forward for experience. Luther turned the world upside down by rediscovering the teaching of justification by faith; Rodney has turned many in the church inside out by giving them joy.

And yet this book is about Jesus. It is a picture of Jesus as seen through the eyes of Rodney Howard-Browne. You may or may not always like what you see, but I have to tell you this book is vintage Rodney.

I have a confession to make before I proceed in this foreword. When I first read it, I thought to myself, I cant write a Foreword to this book. I will have to make a number of corrections first. Why? Because there is serious error here? No. Because of my own reputation. I felt I could not be seen writing a Foreword to this book because some of my evangelical friends would criticize me for doing so. So I asked Rodney to let me make eleven corrections. Guess what? He submitted the book to me and was totally and utterly prepared to change everything I felt needed changing!

And nowhaving re-read the book with the view of changing this and changing that, I felt convicted. Why am I doing this? I am doing it to save my own skin. This has got to be wrong. I have decided therefore to change nothing and let the reader decide! This book will harm nobody and will bless thousands of people. Just as it is.

In my book, In Pursuit of His Glory I have a chapter on Rodney Howard-Browne. I remember when he came to Westminster Chapel to preach for me. I determined to set him free to be himself. I gave no suggestions and put no handcuffs on him. It was a thrilling evening. I think that to the degree I had cautioned him in our conservative, traditional church would have been the degree to which I would have lessened Rodneys anointing and I would have grieved the Holy Spirit. This then is the way I have concluded in the writing of the Foreword of his exciting book. It is presented to you without one suggested change! Why should you not get the complete and unedited Rodney, the man God has chosen to turn churches upside down all over the world.

Let me tell you a story. I asked Rodney to pray for my wife Louise in December 1994. She had a cough that no doctor could heal. It had been her affliction for over three years. It was a horrible cough. She seldom slept through the night. Four nights out of seven she would simply get up and go to another room rather than wake me up. On the morning Rodney was scheduled to pray for her she had been up most of the night, then slept until 9:30 one hour before he was scheduled to meet us. I feared she would sleep on and miss it all; I hated to wake her up as she needed the sleep. But at 9:30 she roused herself and said, I want that man to pray for me. She did not even know his name. She got dressed and got moving as quickly as she could.

We walked into the Vestry at Westminster Chapel at 10:40 that morning. They had never met. She was barely awake. There was no worship, no singing and no hype to get her ready. She simply sat in the chair, probably expecting nothing and certainly feeling desperate. Rodney and his wife Adonica began praying for Louise. Louise recalls the tears that rolled down Adonicas cheeks. They prayed for about five minutes. Louise was instantly healed. As I write these lines, that was nearly ten years ago.

But there was more. The cough had contributed to a severe depression which Louise had suffered with for much of the same time. Rodney invited her to come to his camp meeting he was holding in Lakeland, Florida that following month. He even paid her way and provided the hotel. She phoned me after being there two days. It is the nearest you get to Heaven without dying, she said, adding, it is the greatest experience of my life (a comment I vowed not to take too personally). When she returned to London the depression had lifted.

There is more I could say about Rodney. I believe God has used him to have a major role in what I believe is the embryonic phase of the greatest move of the Holy Spirit since the days of the early church. I call it Isaac, the promised son given to Abraham when he thought Ishamel was surely good enough. I say more about this elsewhere, but let me say now that God has used this man in the lives of our family (our son TR was also transformed by Rodneys ministry) and I believe you will be blessed just by reading this book.

Rodney presents the same Jesus as you find in the Gospels. Let no one think this is another Jesus. Rodney is orthodox regarding his understanding of the person of Jesus Christ as he is in all the essentials of the Christian faith. Rodney extols Jesus name, His blood, His compassion, His healing power among other things. This book will make you laugh and will make you cry. Perhaps not the same as getting to hear him in person, but almost.

Read this book and be changed. If you are traditional and conservative, be prepared to be a little shocked. But then I say to you, Get over it. You will not only survive but will be blessed to exceed your expectations. God bless you as you proceed.

Dr. R.T. Kendall
Minister of Westminster Chapel, London (1977-2002)
Key Largo, Florida
January 2004

INTRODUCTION:
W HAT W AS J ESUS
R EALLY L IKE ?

H AVE YOU EVER WONDERED, WHAT WAS JESUS REALLY LIKE? AS A child growing up in the Church, I listened to preachers preach about Jesus, Sunday after Sunday. The desire in my young heart was to find out more about Him. I remember praying often that He would walk off the pages of the Bible and walk in my heart. I felt, Ive got to see Him. I want to know Him.

I discovered that the only way I could see and know Jesus was to read the Gospels. Then later, as I read the Gospels over and over, I started seeing a different picture of Him than Id heard coming from the pulpit. I heard people say that Jesus wouldnt do this and Jesus wouldnt do that, but when I read the Gospels and found out what He did do, I saw that He was radical. He didnt fit in with the religious. As a matter of fact, Jesus would be kicked out of most churches today! They wouldnt invite Him to speak at most conferences, and He would not be welcome in certain ministerial fellowships and denominations. Why? Because apart from His being totally unorthodox, they wouldnt be able to predict what He might do next!