The Miraculous Way This Famed Pentecostal Preacher Helped Launch Jentezen Franklin’s Television Ministry
Most of us would agree that God’s timing is different from ours. His work in our lives rarely matches the timetable we would have laid out.
Pastor and New York Times bestselling author Jentezen Franklin agrees. “Many times the greatest miracles God will do in your life come in the most inopportune times,” he told Dr. Steve Greene on an episode of the Greenelines podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network. “When you study the life of Jesus and the miracles that He performed, most of them were divine interruptions to the normal schedule He was taking. The woman with the issue of blood was an interruption, and had He not been sensitive, He was on his way to go do something else. … And many times I think we miss God’s blessings because we have our schedule, and we have our timing when God is supposed to do it.”
Franklin shared the story, also told in his book Acres of Diamonds, of how—at a time that was far from convenient—God launched him into television ministry through famed Pentecostal preacher R.W. Schambach. “We had been at the church about four or five years, and we had just finished building our new sanctuary,” Franklin said. “And this was the first building that we built. And it was quite a stretch for us to do that. We built it and had been in it a few weeks, and a preacher by the name of R.W. Schambach called me. He was a Pentecostal preacher and boy, he could preach. He was in the heyday of his ministry; he was on all over Christian TV. And he had thousands of people show up wherever he went to preach.
Schambach called him on a Saturday and asked if he could preach that Sunday evening, Franklin explained. The illustrious preacher arrived late, so the two didn’t get to talk. “He was supposed to preach and take an offering for his ministry,” Franklin said. “And instead of taking an offering for his ministry, he said, ‘God spoke to me.'” He told the congregation that he didn’t know Franklin, but “The Lord wants him on TV. And we’re going to take up an offering to put him on TV. And that night, he took up a cash offering for $138,000, still one of the most miraculous miracles. … we went out the next week and bought TV cameras.”
Despite the miraculous gift, Franklin said he never would have chosen that time to launch what soon became an international television ministry. “We were in a new building; I needed to hire staff; we needed furniture; we needed so many things,” he said. “In my mind, TV ministry would be 3-5 years down the road. But God had the timing. And God had the blessing. And when He did that, we went on television. And it wasn’t long until TBN and other networks reached out to us and said, ‘We’ve seen your TV show; would you come be a part of our broadcast ministry?’ And we began to go to hundreds of nations of the world.”
To learn more about why Franklin says to stay where God has you because “acres of diamonds are coming your way,” listen to the entire podcast episode at this link, and be sure to subscribe to Greenelines on the Charisma Podcast Network for more inspiring stories. {eoa}
