MIRACLES at a ROCK CONCERT Pt. 1
(Excerpts from The Prodigal Diaries by Ken Simmons)
(A Preface to “Miracles at a Rock Concert – Part I”) -- As a young man I was on the board of directors of the newly formed Orange County Teen Challenge. On a Saturday night when I went to a gathering at the Teen Challenge center in Anaheim in early 1969 I was completely unprepared for what was about to happen . . .
The speaker that evening was Dick Mills, who was well-known for his prophetic gifts and the word of knowledge. I was standing at the far corner of the room when he called me out and said, “Young man, God’s going to be sending you across the country, and I see you ministering to thousands, and many will be saved. God has His hand on you, and He has anointed you for a great work. Get your affairs in order because you’ll be leaving soon.”
That night I went home, and as I was about to fall asleep I had a vision in which I was standing chest deep in a river, and I was baptizing young people who’d given their lives to Christ. This vision was so vivid and specific. I saw trees along a riverbank heavily laden with Spanish moss, and the banks were filled with hundreds, maybe thousands of people watching as the new Christians went down into the water. And as they came up out of the water the Spirit of the Lord descended upon them, and with a heavenly glow about them they lifted their hands and began to praise God. This vision went on for a long time, and each new convert came down into the river to be baptized, and the crowds of onlookers were amazed at the scene.
Within a few months I moved my family to Lakeland, Florida to begin the work that Dick Mills had prophesied.
Fast forward about two years. By this time I had a number of former drug dealers and addicts that were part of my team whose lives had been dramatically changed, and we went to weekend rock concerts in Lowery Park near Tampa, Florida.
This rock concert usually had anywhere from fifteen hundred to five thousand people, sometimes more, and it was the scene of sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. People were shooting up heroin out in the open and pot smoke filled the air. Each weekend we would travel to the park, and in the middle of the rock concert we put up a large wooden cross made up of railroad ties that we brought from our Christian coffee house, The Dove.
Our message was simple: “Jesus is real… and He loves you and wants to give you a new life.” Right away we began to see results. Some of the most hardened dopers there were softening up, and several had decided to follow Jesus. By the third weekend that we’d been coming to the rock concert, one of the members of the rock band summoned me to the microphone, and I got the sense he wanted me to get up on the stage to see if I’d make a fool of myself. He shouted,
“You keep saying Jesus is real . . . get up here and prove it.”
When I jumped up on the stage, he handed me the microphone and when I began to speak a hush fell over the crowd of about five thousand. The Holy Spirit seemed to descend like a love blanket over these young people. Then I began,
“Just as real as I’m standing here . . . Jesus Christ is here and He loves you. If you’re quiet and listen to your heart, you’ll feel Him. He’s got your heart in His hands right now. You can feel your heart beating, pounding in your chest. Call on Buddha, call on Allah—nothing happens! Call on the Hindu gods, and nothing happens! But call on Jesus, and He will touch you and you’ll know it’s Him! Just when I said that, some of you felt your heart skip a beat. Some felt a lump in your throat. That’s the Spirit calling you to Jesus.” Then I said,
“Many here have had their lives touched by Jesus. Dopers, pushers, prostitutes -- it doesn’t matter. Whatever you’ve done, Jesus already took the rap for you so you’d never have to stand before God and hear the word, ‘Guilty!’ We’re going down to the river and baptize some of those who have given their lives to Jesus.”
As I jumped down from the stage and began to walk about 75 yards to the nearby Hillsborough River I heard a commotion behind me, and I turned around, and to my amazement, everyone—everyone—was leaving the rock concert and going down to the river. The entire rock concert emptied out and followed me to the river to watch the baptisms.
As I went down into the water, by this time there was a line of young people waiting to be baptized. The first was a young man called “Lucky,” who’d lost both his legs in Vietnam. Wearing braces and crutches he struggled down the bank to reach me. I baptized him, and when he came up out of the water it was as if the heavens opened up, and the Holy Spirit poured a bucket of love over him. He lifted his face toward heaven and spontaneously began to praise God.
It was then that I looked up, and to my astonishment I again saw that vision that I’d had two years earlier, and it was being played before my eyes exactly as I’d seen it as though in instant replay,
“I saw trees along a riverbank heavily laden with Spanish moss, and the banks were filled with hundreds, maybe thousands, of people watching as the new Christians went down into the water. And as they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord descended upon them, and with a heavenly glow about them, they lifted their hands and began to praise God. This dream went on for a long time, and each new convert came down into the river to be baptized, and the crowds of onlookers were amazed at the scene.”
Even down to the leaves on the oak trees and the Spanish moss, everything was exactly the same. This was the literal fulfillment of that vision. When I went home later that evening, I fell to my knees and wept. God had told me what was going to happen years earlier, and it happened exactly as He said it would.
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(PUBLICIST'S NOTE: This is but one of the many miracles that is chronicled in Ken's life story "The Prodigal Diaries," which is available on Amazon, Target, iTunes, Christian Faith Publishing, Kobo, and GoodReads.)