Virgil, you’re from Richmond, Indiana, and I’m told you grew up with the great move of the Spirit of God in the 1950s.
Yes, in the 1950s, I got saved in 1949.
So you’d have seen some of the great US evangelists of that period.
Yes, they were the men I admired. I got saved in a big tent in front of about 10,000 people. So I was raised under this Pentecostal influence for many years. My mother ministered in a Pentecostal church. She had the Holy Spirit quite a while before I was born.
Would you share your experience of being born again?
God called me when I was eight years old. Then, when I was nine, He spoke to me again, twice in the one year. He said, “Virgil, some day you’ll preach my Gospel.” His voice was so distinct I looked around. Then I went home and told my mother, “I heard today in church, ‘Some day you’ll preach my Gospel.’”
Then, when I was eleven, I gave my heart to the Lord. This happened on December 12th, 1949, at a big meeting. Mother was ministering with a preacher at that time. She bought a tent, and I began to help her and work with her in prayer lines, and helped to assist her in the services.
What age would you have been then?
I started my ministry when I was twelve years old. By the time I was 15, I was preaching. By the time I was eighteen, I had some success. I hadn’t ironed out the wrinkles in the flesh yet, but I was successful in that I knew how to reach people; how to use all the gifts. Between eighteen and twenty-eight, I began to come into the fullness of my ministry.
You mean to mature?
I grew into it, and that’s the proper way.
I believe that you knew Jack Coe?
My mother knew him. I knew Sister Coe and I knew his so. I never got to meet him personally, but I was influenced by his ministry.
Would you share a few details about other ministries you knew in those days?
The men who really influenced me in those days were Jack Coe, Oral Roberts, Branham, and A A Allen, who was a master at casting out devils. Roberts was a master of healing in the area of laying on of hands. He said he had [the gift] in his hands. Branham was used in the Word of Knowledge. I got in the Word of Knowledge before I ever heard of Branham, and then I saw Branham bringing it forth in a tremendous way. People responded by the thousands.
So these were the key men of that era. Branham flowed in the Word of Knowledge, Allen in casting out demons, Roberts with the gift of healing, and Coe with the gift of miracles. I was ministering all the time, so had grown into my own ministry, but I was influenced by seeing them on TV, radio, in in their meetings when I was in their area. Allen I knew quite well. Branham’s church was 130 miles from us. They were really great men.
At Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship conventions, Branham spoke, Roberts spoke, Coe spoke; so I was always under the influence of the dynamic ministries of that day.
They had an impact, but my mother’s ministry was the one that really impacted on me, because she had done all those things before these men came along.
As a farmer’s wife, my mother had seen miracles, had raised the dead, everything. (This was in the 30s and 40s.) Preachers told her, “You can’t do that! God doesn’t heal. You can’t cast out devils today – only God can do that!” After a while, she began to think: Am I right? And she heard a preacher on the radio. His name was Earl Ivy. He was one of the outstanding preachers of that day. That’s who mother heard on the radio, and when she went to the meeting, my dad had to carry her to the car. She was physically broken, exhausted. But in that tent meeting, she was healed because she saw a man do and preach what she had done for fifteen years. Early Ivy was also a great influence in T L Osborn’s life. Osborn worked for him before he launched out into his own ministry. Earl Ivy was one of the best ministers, but he never got a lot of recognition.
So you were one of the younger preachers?
I started getting attention at about the age of eighteen; that’s when people began to give me attention, treat me serious.
Did they invite you to crusade with them?
Well, by the time I was in the twenties, I began to associate with those who were still around, like A A Allen. He often invited me into his house. He preached in my church. We were friends. He’d see me and holler, “Hi!” Ask me out.
When I first met A A Allen, I was hired to drive a house trailer to California for him. I was going to preach, and as a young preacher, I needed the money, so I just hired on. I had Branham once pick me out at Proule, in Washington DC, and I was healed in the chest. I had tremendous problems in my lungs, due to speed skating. The powder that was put on the floor to hold the roller skates like a seal, created quite a dust. I think that’s where my chest condition originated from, because after I gave up speed skating, I noticed that when I lay down I couldn’t breathe and had a real pain in my chest. I could only lay down when I needed to sleep. If I laid down on the couch for a rest, I would have this pain and begin to suffocate. Branham picked me out of the crowd, told me God was going to heal my chest, and I’ve never had it since.
So it would be fair to say that your mother got you started, and then the environment that other ministers provided helped you to develop.
Largely, my mother launched my ministry. It was already there, she told me to develop it. These other men inspired me. God told me when I first started that he had reserved my ministry for the last days. I developed and have come through the great healing era into the great teaching era, and now to this day, when we’re going to see some of the greatest times ever. I think God groomed me for 44 years to be where I am today, to teach and to preach and to demonstrate, and to see the miracles that we’re now seeing. Those men of the power era, the miracle era, they were smart in their day, but today they would lack wisdom. On the other hand, the great teachers that we have today seldom have miracles in their ministries.
So along the way, what are some of the experiences you had: triumphs, tragedies, whatever?
Well, I started praying for the sick first, in healing lines. That was the way everybody did it back then. Well, the Lord gave me a word when I was fifteen. It was the name of a sickness, and the next person in the line had that, and it was frightening, tremendously frightening. I thought: Never heard of this! And then another word came to me, and the next person had that sickness.
That was the beginning of the “word of knowledge” [in my ministry]. (Then we called it Discerning of Spirits but now we’ve got them separated.) I thought that I was telling fortunes, so I prayed asking God to take it away from me. I didn’t have enough wisdom to know what I had, so for three years I resisted it.
Then during a series of fasts and times of prayer, it came back to me again. It was little more than a word, but I identified it and thought: This must be good – for some reason God has told me this. Ten I resized that it was to build my faith. The word of knowledge builds faith. So for six months, the Lord would say to me, “Deaf ear.” I’d say to the person, “What’s wrong with you?” And the person would say, “Deaf ear.” So I developed it.
Then for five years I would stand up and say, “Somebody here’s got back trouble” and the person would stand up and be healed. Then the Lord said, “That person over there.” And for six months it happened that way. It was frightening to some degree. I would say, “Somebody’s got a leg problem,” and that person would stand up and would be healed. So for six months I did that.
Then one day I said, “You! You’ve got this!” Man, that was the moment of truth! I was just shaking all over because I was really stepping out in faith. Well, Branham had picked them out, and so when I picked them out I was sure that I should do it, because Branham had done it. (When I had first begun to heal the sick, I had not heard of William Branham.)
So, you really had no precedent in the sense of public acceptance?
No, that’s the thing. That’s why I resisted it.
How would you define your God-given gift? Discerning of spirits? Word of knowledge? Do you kind of just go out there and then let God do whatever He wants?
Definitely, I’m simply God’s instrument, just an instrument.
Do you spend much of your time travelling the world?
Six or seven times to India. Another brother and I have drawn the largest crowds in history; even the politicians haven’t drawn such crowds. Much bigger than Billy Graham because he got 55,000, and they were mainly Christians. (I know that because they all dressed in white, and Hindus dress in coloured saris. The Christians dress in white saris. I looked at the film and it was all white saris.) We were thrilled that we drew 90% Hindus. We saw tremendous results!
Did you see mass miracles?
About 300 a night in Trevandrum. The police and the newspapers estimated the crowds at more than 200,000 a night. Then in the morning services we would run teaching seminars with the pastors, and we’d see 4,000 to 5,000 in these meetings.
Do you go to a particular place in India?
Well, Trevandrum, Nagapor, several other places. In Nagapor we had the support of the Archbishop of Southern India. He was amazed. It really was an influence on his life.
What do you see about the USA today? Is the great move of the Spirit of God over?
The move that is over is the Charismatic move, and the Teaching era. Now we’ve entered the Apostolic era.
What will this mean?
Results. We’re going to see [people] with great wisdom, with the gifts and the power of the Holy Spirit like we’ve never seen before. We’re going to see it all put together. We’re going to complete the picture. We’re going to see the perfection of the Body of Christ.
How will the message get across? Will it be TV mostly?
Well, yes, but not TV as we have seen it. Men have spoken of the Electronic Church, but I think TV will spread the word. We’re going to see unusual miracles, arms lengthened out, legs restored. Jesus healed the maimed, the [disabled], the blind; it was no problem. We’re going back to unusual miracles, the spectacular, so that the world will not be able to even question the power of God.
Much is said about healing the sick, but we don’t hear as much about the healing of people who are injured; and yet possibly half the healings that are taking place are people who’ve been in car accidents – bones out of place, and so on. They are all included in the Atonement, aren’t they?
Well, I preach divine health. In the 50s we saw divine healing, we’re now preaching divine health, so loss of health can be stopped before it really starts. When you first identify it, stop it. We’re going into divine health, divine thinking, divine living. We’re going to be as the apostles, who were as Christ.
So the believer by the power of the Holy Spirit, is virtually going to be reliving the life of Christ?
Lacking in nothing, coming behind in no good thing.
What do you feel about Australia? Got anything from God?
The Lord told me last year that He is getting ready to sweep across Australia. He said to me: I want you to go and lay a foundation. And that’s why I’m teaching here, because I think Australia is going to see a revival. I think the world is. I don’t think that it is going to break out in Australia or America or Africa, but worldwide.
The final outpouring?
Right; the final restoration of the church. What Peter and Paul did was spectacular, but that was the beginning. What you are going to see is even greater.
Do you intend coming back to Australia?
Sometime; I’ll work with any church in the world. I work with many denominational churches in the States that asks me to come and teach – whatever it is. I don’t go to argue, I go to be a blessing. I don’t go to change, I go to deliver the fallen.
What would you say then to those who are seeing some of those things? What should they do to get deeper into this kind of ministry?
Obedience. Just start wherever God says. The Bible says that in the last days we should hear what the Spirit has to say, and then obey. I’m going to obey.
Thank you very much, Virgil Johnson.