Ken
God Knows Where We Are
I’m Ken Gaub from Yakima, Washington, and I’m an evangelist, missionary evangelist. My dad was a nightclub entertainer. My mother was a dancer, and that’s how they met. And they moved to Yakima to get away from my uncle who found the Lord in Colorado.
So the only place they could find to live in Yakima, Washington was across the street from a church that had a revival going on till midnight. You know, one of those kind. My mother, she didn’t like all the singing and the music and everything –They weren’t Christians then; they moved to get away from my uncle, as I said. – and so mom said, “You go over there and stop that meeting.” So my dad went over, and he just went down, sat in the front seat and to make a long story short, my dad got converted that night, gave his life to Christ. Then when he went and went home, my mother was mad. She was going to divorce dad, so he didn’t know what to do but let mom go to the meeting. Mom went to the meeting, and she got converted. And that was the story of how they got started.
I stayed home from church one night with my sisters, and I didn’t know if it was a dream or a vision, or what happened, but the Lord came into my room holding a white Bible and said, “You will preach My Word through this book.” And that’s why for years, you know, I’ve had a white Bible. But, my parents came home and I was scared to death of what happened, and I was afraid to tell them. I’d seen some miracles with my dad, and things that were incredible. Like, one time, we were at breakfast and Dad said, “God just healed my car last night.” And I looked at my sister, I thought, boy, they really lost it; God don’t heal cars. And my mother said, “How do you know it was the Lord?” He said, “Well, His feet were sticking out under the car, and it had nail prints in them.” And I couldn’t wait to go to church! That old Mercury smoked so bad that when you took off from the light, people had to wait for the next light, because there was smoke everywhere. And that day we went to church, there were no smoke coming out of that car and that car ran for a couple of years after that. So I, as a kid, saw miracles happen and I knew that there must be a God somewhere that causes miracles to happen.
Finally, I ended up, I went to Bible school because my dad was on the board in Seattle, where he drove from Iowa to Seattle and they put me there in the Bible school, and I wasn’t even a Christian. So we went to church and I saw this girl singing in the choir. I told my mother, “You see that blonde in the choir? I’m going, I’m gonna marry her.” And she said, “You’re crazy. She doesn’t even know you.” I said, “Well, she will. She’ll know me.” I tried to date her, but it didn’t work. She said, “I don’t date unsaved boys.” And I said, “Okay, I’m saved then.” But that didn’t work either. And I finally found the Lord. She was the one that really got me converted and then we started ministry in Kentucky.
I pioneered a church. I led a man to the Lord on the street. – I got out of Bible school, graduated. – I led a man to Christ on the street and I said, “You want to belong to my church?” And he said, “Where’s your church?” I said, “You’re looking at it. I’m it. Me and my wife, we just started.” And that was the guy that we later, two years later, turned the church over to and we went out in evangelistic work with our family.
We had a tent. Our first tent seated 150 people. Our second tent seated about, I think 300. Then we had a tent that seated 1,000 and we had a tent that seated 3,000 and then we had a tent that, the last tent we bought from Reverend Shambock, I think seated almost 10,000. We had two semi trucks and 8000 chairs and we did tent crusades all over the country. I even bought an ambulance and offered one way ambulance service to the meeting to get healed. And we did all kinds of crazy stuff. But we won a lot of people to the Lord. And our family was a singing family. We advertised and had our daughter Becky, we called her the world’s youngest song leader, and she’d lead a song or two, at three years old, we had a lot of fun.
Oh, the phone call story, everybody is always moved by that because a lot of people talked about it. And it never happened to me before and never happened to me since. But when I was traveling with my family in the bus, we pulled off the road in Ohio to eat something. And I stayed in the bus. I wasn’t hungry, and I was trying to figure out some things in my life. I was a little discouraged. And Robert Schuller came on TV. I turned the TV on in the bus and he said, “Let me tell you what your problem is.” And I thought, what’s he talking about? He said, “Your problem is you need to walk away from your yesterdays.” Well, I didn’t know what that meant. I thought, what’s he talkin’ about? So I turned him off. I didn’t like him.
Then I walked down the street to get a Pepsi and on the way back, I was going by a gas station – They had those phone booths out in front. The kind with a screen and you walk inside. You know, the old fashioned kind. – and the phone was ringing and ringing and ringing. So I thought maybe it’s an emergency call for someone in the gas station. So I went up to the phone, I said, “Hello.” And the operator said, “Long distance call. Person to person for Ken Guab.” I said, “You’re crazy. I’m not. That’s me, but I’m not doing anything, I’m just walking down the street.” And she said, “Well, is he there?” And I said, “Yeah, I’m him.” She said, “Are you sure?” I said, “Yes. I’m Ken Gaub.” And then I heard somebody say, I believe that’s him. I believe that’s him. And I thought, Man, I must be on Candid Camera or something. I looked around, didn’t see anything and a lady came on and she was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She was going to commit suicide and she said, “God gave me your phone number. Are you in your office in California?” I said, “My office is in Yakima, Washington.” And she said, “Well, where are you at?” I said, “Lady, you made the call. I’m in Ohio.” She said, “What are you doing there?” I said, “Well, I’m answering the phone.” And the rest is history just about. I prayed with her and she was a Christian, but she had some struggles and I prayed with her. And when I left the phone booth, I couldn’t believe it happened myself.
I was walking back to the bus. My family came out of the restaurant and I hollered across the parking lot. And I said to my wife, Barb, I said, “God knows where we are.” And she said, “Are you okay?” I said, “I think so.” But I said, “You won’t believe what happened. The phone was ringing and it was for me and I led a woman to the Lord to pray with her and help her through her struggle.” And it just was something that the family… I said, “Don’t ever tell nobody this because we have a good reputation. Nobody will ever believe this. It’s hard to believe myself and it happened to me!” So we left and we went to a meeting. I had to, I don’t know what it was, but I had to tell somebody. So I told a pastor. I said, “I gotta tell you what happened; it’s crazy.” And I told him. So he got up in the meeting – He was there for something. – and he got up in this meeting and said, Ken Gaub, come up here! You’ve got to tell this story that happened to you just a while ago.” And there I was, I had to do it. And I told him that nobody’d believe it. People wept and cried, clapped, laughed, you know, whatever it was something else. And then from there, I put it in a book called God’s Got Your Number. It has circled the world, many languages and so on.
So God knows where we are at all times. Nothing, I don’t believe anything in life happens by chance with God. God doesn’t say, “Oh My goodness, I never expected that to happen.” He knows what’s going to happen in advance in our lives. He leads and guides us. And I am always amazed at how God has worked miracles that I’ve seen in my life because we trusted God. We simply believe God. It has nothing to do with anything else, but just simple faith. And it works Adam; I believe faith really works. He’s always looking out for us. We do some dumb things in life, but God looks out for us. God told Joshua, that “I will fight your battles for you.” How great is that? That God will fight our battles? I believe, to this day, that God is fighting our battles.
I told a lot of people the other day that the devil whispered in my ear, since my wife passed away and, and said to me, “Ken, you cannot get through the struggle of finances and everything you face in the ministry without your wife. You cannot make it through this storm.” And I told the devil, “Get thee behind me, Satan! I am the storm!” I am going to win! I’m going to expect a miracle and you know, miracles are happening. Every day we’re seeing miracles happen and, and I give God the praise for it. I know that God cares about us and, and even little things in our life, He cares about it.
The other day I was flying from Denver to Atlanta and I sat beside this man. I’ve learned in soul winning, timing. So I sat beside this man and he said, “Well, what do you do?” I said, “I travel.” He said, “Where do you travel?” I said, “I travel everywhere.” He said, “What do you do while you travel?” I said, “I speak.” He said, “What do you speak on?” I said, “I speak on a lot of subjects.” And he said, “Well, who invites you?” I said, “People.” So I never told him anything. He didn’t find out anything about me. And to tell you ahead of time, what I did not know was, he was a Christian. I guess he was going to lead me to Christ.
So we sat there a couple hours and then I heard him say, “Oh, my.” He said, “I, oh Lord.” He said, “Okay, I’ll do it.” And I thought, he’s talking to God. What is he talking about? And he reached in his briefcase, and he pulled out a roll of bills, a big roll of bills with a rubber band around it and he threw it in my lap. And I said, “Sir, what? What are you doing?” I didn’t ask you for no money. I don’t want your money. And he said, “Whatever God tells you to do, you have to do it if you’re going to be successful. You have to trust God.” And I thought, well, what’s he talking about? And he said, “I don’t know what your needs are, but this is for your personal needs.” And then he said, “Oh, my. I forgot that.” and he opened up his billfold and he had a 10 for emergency money in the back. He took it out and he put that in my lap. And I said, “Wait a minute. I didn’t ask you for this money.” And he said, “Well, God told me to give you all the cash I had on hand and that’s it.”
And then this man told me, he said, “You know what?” He said, “Ten years ago, I wasn’t livin’ for God and a man invited me to church to hear this guy preach in Tucson, Arizona.” And he told me the name of the church and the pastor’s name. And I thought, what’s he talking about? I go to that church every year. And he said, “Then this guy was, told some funny stuff and next thing I knew, he gave an invitation and a bunch of us were down in front and we accepted Jesus Christ as our personal Savior.” He said, “This guy was Ken Gaub from Yakima, Washington.” And I had a mask on, on the airplane and he said, “Take your mask down.” And I took it down. He said, “You are…” I said, “I’m Ken Gaub.” He said, “You are!” He said, “I listened to your videos and I bought your books…” and all that, you know. So isn’t that something, how God puts things together? See, nothing happens by accident with God.
Well later when I went to the hotel, there was $1,800 in 50s and 20s in that role of bills plus the $10 and it, I cried, it touched my life. I thought, you know, how does God know all these things? He knows how to take care of every need that we have: spiritual, physical, financial, emotional, whatever. God knows how to do that. My job is to trust Him. My job is to believe Him and to know that He cares for me and He’s concerned about me. That’s my job. And that’s what I try to do. I try to obey the Lord in everything.
Now, after almost seven decades of soul winning, my wife went to be with the Lord. She was 84 years old, and she closed her eyes on Earth and in a split second, opened them in heaven. That’s the way it works. Jesus conquered death for us. So we got something to be happy about, and to be thankful for. I’m looking forward to the day when we all go to heaven, and meet the Lord who died for us. He paid the price for us to have a mansion in heaven. I believe that, don’t you Adam?
