Now you heard your
grandmother talking about this for days. Right. What do you remember
as your impression as you're
walking in there? Were you sensing
anything or were
you just watching
the meeting? You hit it, you hit
an atmosphere. It startled me. It's like getting on
the plane in Alaska and landing in Florida. So you actually
felt something. Oh immediately.
Immediately. Immediately, there
was an atmosphere. There was something
you walk into. It's like: Wow!
What's this? Every place
has atmosphere. If you go to a rodeo,
there's atmosphere. If you go to a football
game, there's
atmosphere. You know that
atmosphere in a
football game. What did you
think? I just had
never felt that. This was like
foreign to me. What was this? Because I had never
felt that in my church. So then I thought this
is supposed to be
church. What's this? But it was clearly
a different climate because climate
creates culture. And so I didn't know
about climate and culture but climate
creates culture and I didn't... Explain more on that,
climate creates culture?
What do you mean? Well if you look around
the world, climates of
Brazil and Argentina or
England or anything,
you know their climate it what
creates who they are, the texture of
their skin, their
hair, their fiber,
their diet. All of their language
so climate creates
all of that. I'm so excited
today to have
with me Pastor Billy
Burke. Pastor Burke, thank
you for joining with me today. Everybody on the Revival Radio
TV team, we're excited. Now those of you who don't know
about Pastor Billy Burke, we going to
kind of delve a little bit into his history and
I think you're going to really enjoy hearing his
story, maybe some things that you haven't
heard before. First off, Pastor Billy,
you've got a ministry all over the world. You travel all over the
world doing what you do with miracles, and
healings and seeing people and really what
we talk about here with revival is what you do
so much of and you talk about. Recently you were here
at Eagle Mountain Church and we talked about
revival and you even talked about revival in
your own messages and what we're doing. But before we get
into that, I have some questions, I've got so
much stuff I want to ask. I want to hear from you
because so many people don't know your story. It goes back a few years
to when you're age 9. Tell us what
happened. 1962. There is my age. Diagnosed with
terminal brain cancer. Metastasized. I was in the
hospital in
Pittsburgh
in Oakland and imagine the
technology in 1962. Imagine the instruments. Imagine the way they did
everything compared to today so it was
archaic in nature. So the tumor was
diagnosed in my head. My eyes had crossed into
my head completely so my vision was either
blind or double. My motor skills were
gone and paralyzed on one side. The cancer was
spreading into my lungs. My back had lumps all
over it and you know I was raised in an
evangelical church, but my grandmother was an
avid listener to Kathryn Kuhlman on that
radio broadcast. I didn't know Kathryn. My grandmother didn't
know Kathryn but she was an avid listener to
that radio broadcast. And so when the doctors
reached the verdict that I had just days to live
and that if they did cobalt radiation back then was
the big breakthrough thing. And they said if they
go the cobalt radiation we may be able to spare
his life for a few months. My grandmother spoke up
and said no we're having him discharged and
they said you're crazy. Listen I'm taking him to a
service a few blocks from here. That's when she was
holding meetings at First Presbyterian Sixth
Avenue, Pittsburgh every other Friday morning and
so long story short, I was discharged, had to
sign all kinds of legal papers, to be
discharged. Now before you get into
the rest of the story let's go back to--you're
nine years and you're old enough to remember,
at nine years old what was going on,
were you scared? Frightened as
nine years old? Anyone is afraid
whenever your vision goes. You know, and the
pain was so bad. There was no medication
that I could take that would help the pain. So were you like, you
said your vision went, were you blurry or
just couldn't see? Double vision everything
was everything was doubled. They had to put a patch
over one eye so I could see from the one eye
because everything was
double. The tumor had so
compressed the brain, the brain stem, the
bottom of the brain that I mean it was
just bad... So the tumor was back... Front and back. When I was discharged
that's when the ordeal began at home. The meeting was on
Friday with Kathryn. I was discharged on a
Monday so for four days my grandmother which
just round-the-clock every time she got a
chance, I had to drink from the straw, I
couldn't see much. We had buckets of
ice water by the sofa soaking tiles just to
try to keep the pain but my grandmother would say
when she touches you... when she touches you,
I'd say when who touches me... When Miss Kathryn Kuhlman,
she's going to touch you, you are
going to be healed and I didn't know at that
time, Gene but she was preparing me
for a miracle. As I said today
either in church revival, most people don't know how to
prepare for that. So she was actually speaking
words of faith to you. Well, that's the way of
saying it but I look at it, she was preparing me
for someone who couldn't prepare themselves. We prepare to
go to church. We don't prepare
for revival. We prepare for
Thanksgiving and Christmas and funerals
and celebrations and picnics and vacation but
most people, they don't wake up on Sunday
morning and think I am going to get
healed today. I'm going to have a
deliverance today. They prepare for a
service, for a sermon. They prepare to go home. They prepare to go home
after church which is fine, nothing wrong with
that but preparing for miracle is a whole
different set of, some things take more
preparation. Jesus had to lay back
four days before he raised his dead cousin. Why? Because He hadn't raised
anybody yet so it took a different kind of
preparation so different things take different
preparations and I didn't know how
to prepare myself. I was dying. I
couldn't stop myself. I didn't know
what to do. I didn't know Kathryn, I didn't
listen to the radio broadcast. I was dependent upon
somebody carrying me and so she prepared
me for four days. I got sick of hearing
her because it was, it was against my flow. I wasn't used to someone
coming into my space saying something. Here I am dying. She's trying to help
me and I'm resisting because I didn't know. Most of us don't know what's on
the other side of preparation. If we did we'd prepare
ourselves more diligently so Friday
came, Friday morning. We're driving
to Pittsburgh. My mother and my dad,
my grandmother, we are driving into Pittsburgh
into the meeting and we are 45 minutes away,
and my grandmother was saying oh, she's going
to call you out and I'm thinking, I never seen,
been in that kind of meeting. How many people
were there at
the meeting? Close to 2000. It was a big
meeting... It was a big
meeting Where
were you at? I was in the
balcony. When was got there,
we couldn't get in. The people, there had to be 1000
people on the outside. Two thousand
on the inside. and we were ready to
turn around and go. And one of ushers on the
side door saw how bad I was. Now could you
walk at this time or they
carried you? With help, with
human crutches I
could walk and he saw us from the
side door, and said, come on like this so he
snuck us into the side door of that church and
up the stairway to the balcony so he goes over
to the front row in the balcony. I put my chin on the
railing and of course then began this meeting
that I had never seen anything like that. I mean she came out and
was, she was Kathryn Kuhlman. I had just never been
in a meeting like that. I just got caught up
immediately in what she was doing and you know
just moving in the gifts, the worship but there
was an atmosphere. There were something I was in
that I had never been in before. Let me ask you
about that: So
you're there in the meeting. You get called in
as a nine-year-old. Now, you've heard your
grandmother talk to you about this for days. Right. What do you remember
as your impression as you're walking in there? What were you--were you
sensing anything or were you just watching
the meeting? You hit it. You hit an atmosphere
and it startled me. It's like getting on
the plane in Alaska and landing in Florida. So you actually
felt something. Oh immediately,
immediately. There was an atmosphere. There were something
you walk into, it's like wow...What's this? I mean every place
has atmosphere. if you go to a rodeo, there is an atmosphere. If you go to a football game, there's atmosphere. You know that atmosphere
at a football game. So what did you think? I just had
never felt that. This was like
foreign to me. What is this? Because I'd never
felt that in my
church so then I thought this
is supposed to be
church. What is
this? But it was clearly
a different climate. You know because climate
creates culture and so I didn't know about
climate and culture but climate creates culture. Explain more on
that climate
creates culture. What do you mean? Well if you look around
the world at the
climates of Brazil and Argentina or
England or anything, you know that their climate
is what creates who they are, the texture of
their skin, their hair, their fiber, their diet. All of their language so
climate creates all of that in the pigmentation
of skin so who we are today, how big in body
parts are, how big from our ears to our nose to
our eyes, to our lips, to our diet, all of
those things and that's why we that travel
through different cultures enjoyed eating
different ethnic foods. Because we didn't grow up with
that so it's a different taste. That taste came from
their culture and in the spirit, I mean there's
cultures that I'm understanding
it more today. I mean I didn't
know anything then. All I knew then is I
walked into something and it was what is this? It didn't take me long
to figure it out and I was like, wow. I saw her move in the
power and people getting slain and touched
and healed. I was very much
enjoying that. It was like
entertainment then she turned and
pointed to me. And she said you and
she said: "you get down here. You're being healed of cancer"
and I screamed real loud, "No". Really? Oh I did and then
she said, "No. She said, "No, young
men you get down here." A second time I said,
"No"... And why did you
say no? Probably because
I was afraid Just scared of
what was
happening. And the third time she
said, "Ushers, get him down here." So Norm, I now know
him very well, Norm and Donnie who is not with
us now but she sent Norm and Donnie into
the balcony. They came over and they
said to my grandmother: "Ms. Kuhlman wants us to take
him down." And there was no questioning her
in those meetings, the way
she ran her meetings. It was very strict. And my grandma
said, "Take him." So they picked me up
and my family followed, walked down the aisle
to meet Ms. Kuhlman and there she is standing waiting
and got down to meet her. And she said:
"Here you are. You wouldn't come
out of that balcony." She says, what's your name,
young boy? What's your name? I said, "Billy", and
I said it with what language I could and she
said, "I just want to know one thing from you. That's all I want from
you is one thing". She stuck that
right in my face. She said, "Do you believe?
That's all I want to know". And I said, "Yea." She turned around
to walk away. I remember I took a big
sigh of relief thinking boy, that was easy and
then she suddenly spun. I said, "Do
you believe?" I was just like, I
tried to say yes and
no at the same time. I knew she caught me. I knew she sensed that
and before I could even answer her, her hand
was coming towards me. And as her hand was
coming towards me, I could hear my
grandmother's voice "when she touches you". When she
touches you. I could hear her voice
but Kathryn's hand and that's why I know about
being prepared to see that prepared me for the
hand that was about to touch me. That's, I was prepared. Didn't know it. Didn't know it so had I
just had a hand coming to me, I don't know what
would have happened but I had a
hand and a voice. And when that hand hit
me, I went and four rows went with me, four
rows in a big church. People laying on
top of people and... Now when you went down
were you out, did you have any consciousness? I couldn't move I was
conscious but I
couldn't move. I could not move. That was
frightening
because there
was just no movement, just
nothing, my whole body was just like
froze on the floor. But I could feel this
wonderful radiation through me just up and
down just radiating... Maybe thirty,
forty-five seconds, she let that happen, maybe
a minute I don't know. It just seemed like
forever but she said, bring him up. She said, "Oh
my, oh my." I said, "Uh," I didn't realize
it but my paralysis was gone. There was no pain. But I didn't realize it. I said "what's,
what's, what is this?" I was able to talk. She said you need one
more, you need one more. Then she touched me and
of course I went down. This time she said, I remember
laying there I could hear everything. I could see everything
but I couldn't move again. And she says if there
is anybody in this auditorium with blood
cancer, leukemia...she went on, she said, you
must come down and stand around the boy at
this point, there is a radiating faith and she
said a few other things. Then I remember people
standing on pews and looking at me and kids
looking at me and I was helpless, I just
couldn't move. Maybe she left me there
maybe five minutes so when I got up after that
she said, "Well look at you". I said, "This is
pretty amazing. I don't have any pain." She said, "Take the
patch off your eye." I said, "No, I don't
want to do that. I said because I
have double vision. She said, "No, you
had double vision. She said everything
else is working. Take the patch off, I
said I'd rather not. She's, you take the
patch off or I'm going to take the patch off. Where's your grandmother
during this time? Right there crying. All that. They all there helpless
not even helping me. And I thought who
was this lady? What church does she belong to
that they do that at church? Instead of taking the
patch off, it flipped up the patch like that. and to my amazement my
eyes had straightened out and I was seeing
normal and I just I lost it. I thought wow,
what is this? She went on "Holy
Spirit", did a bit of prophesying, stuff like
that and I just went, I was amazed! I just was so
spellbound. Of course I walked
out of the church. I was carried in
practically and walked out, came in one way and
walked out another way. The very surgeon, the
very surgeon who sends me to death, it must
been about two weeks later, he had heard
about what had happened and he didn't believe it
so he came, he drove all the way to my home,
knocked on our front door and said that
I need to see Billy, expecting me to
be in bad shape. So my grandma took
him through the house. She said see the kid in the red
hat playing ball over there. That's him and he
said, "it's amazing". He said there is no way. He said, "I don't
know what happened or understand how this
all happened, I guess miracles do happen" but
he said, "you have one very lucky,
a lucky boy". She's said no,
this isn't luck. She said this and she
began to talk about the Holy Spirit and
Jesus and all that. Right. But that was
my experience to the healing Jesus. That was my experience. So when you got home
that night...Now here you're nine years old
and your... your grandma told you,
I can just imagine, you are going home with a
realization, one--grandma was right and with
this really happened. The experience never
goes away with something like that. It's with you, it's
like an internal tattoo. It's just with you
forever and you relive it, relive it and relive
it and but I mean what you realize, you don't
realize the scope of it or the ripple effect of
it or the purpose of it. The purpose never
something, it is always in our mind at the
moment why I was spared when my brother was
killed by a drunk driver at sixteen. Why him and not me? He was a better boy. Let's
speak of that. So, you are a healed
nine-year-old boy. I assume, at that point,
life just went on as normal. Never normal,
never normal,
because you know my friends all
thought
something was
strange about me...They thought
now we got to be
careful around you,
you might die. You might...It was that
kind of the thing. That age was very hard
for me ten, eleven, twelve. It was very hard but I
did ascertain normalcy in the sense I did go
to school but it was difficult to be. I continued to be
involved in everything, I was in sports but
there was always that stigma that would circulate
through the grapevine you know he had something wrong
with his head and all that. You know so you had to
live that, through that. My parents divorced when
I was 13 so my mother and my brother and
myself, my younger brother David, we moved
in with my grandparents and that's
where we lived. At that stage is
whenever I backslid, you know I was at that time I was still
going sharing my testimony. From 9 to 13, I go to
church camps, churches, vacation Bibles Schools,
anywhere I could to
share my testimony but none of
the churches ever wanted me to mention her name. Really?...Did
they say why?
Just don't say ? They didn't like
her. The people around the
surrounding areas were not... As history tells us,
that so many revivals started were started by
para ministries not the church itself so God
had to light a fire somewhere else... And so often they fight
each other which is sad but that's just the way
it is and so at thirteen that's when I began
to just, you know so Kathryn reached out to
me at thirteen I didn't want anything to do
with, no I am fine now. So you say she reached
out to you, she wrote you a letter, is that
what she did or called you? She called. She called. That's interesting so
this is several years later she calls to
see how you are doing? Yeah. Just to see how I'm
doing because she heard... We live in a
small town 45 minutes from Pittsburgh but I
mean, one of our family members, my grandmother was very close to
one of her main bus captains
at that time so looking back at it, I don't how
that news got back to her. I don't know I honestly
don't know but she had an interest you know
and so what happened was with that divorce I was
just went 13, 14 ,15,16 , all those years
17, 18, 19. I was 19 and I was planning on
going to another business. I had people step up
who were offering to pay college for me
to go to ORU. I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to go into
the ministry, I didn't want to preach. I was just really
against it. Why, let me ask you that if
it's okay, at the risk of being too personal. You had such a huge
miracle and obviously and I want everyone to
understand that all of this there's an ebb
and flow that we've talked about before but to hear
you're nine years old, you have this huge
miracle, you're speaking in church camps and
everything else yet you didn't
want anything
to do with it
at this point. Well because it
was an oddity
at the time. At that
time, I was
more into
fitting in than in standing out. The pressure of being
alone especially with that kind of the story may me
alone even among my peers. So if I'm in church I'm
still alone, you know because a church even
the church kids thought you think you're
better than us now. So everywhere that
I went I had nowhere to be. There was no landing
spot so I found the greater social
acceptance with friends outside the church who didn't know
anything about it. As I grew older, the
more it lessened and I never talked about it. I knew. My grandmother knew. My mother knew but I
never took that to high school. I never took that into
my backsliden life although the Holy
Spirit never left me. That's the amazing
thing, never left me. I still can't figure
that out other than like Brother Kenneth said,
last night g-r-a-c-e, grace. I mean that was so,
there were periods there where you feel your
living a secret life and that I would rarely
go to church--rarely, maybe Christmas,
New Year's. So I didn't hear from
Kathryn for all those years until I hit like
I said 18, 19 after my brother was killed, he was hit
by a drunk driver and... So where were you
at the time when
you learned that your brother
was killed? I was home alone. Everybody, my grandma,
grandpa were away from home and the state
police called and said you know, is this the
home of David Burke? You need to come
identify the body all that. I just fell apart
because we were a very close, close family and so no one in
the family knew but me. They were all away so
when they came home, I had to tell them and
that began as many watching this show of
yours knows when cancer or death or anything
serious hits a family, it effects the
whole family. So I went to a couple
different pastors, I was really seeking answers
you know about eternity and about heaven,
hell all that stuff. Sovereign election. I went through about
three pastors and none of them really was
able to help me. I felt very and maybe they did
and maybe I wasn't open to help. Looking back at it so
I don't want to say anything like that but
I didn't get any peace with anything that they
said and I knew I had to come to terms with, wow,
why was he taken and me left. I had cancer
all through me. He was healthy. I get healed. He gets hit by
a drunk driver. You know totally the
drivers fault you know, why does he die younger
than me when I was right there with months to go? That whole thing really
bothered me and that's when Maggie Hartner who
is Kathryn's main lady called . And she said Kathryn
said she wants to meet you. She said now this
is your time. So you went and saw her. Let me take a
pause right here. Those of you that were
maybe your old enough you could have known
Kathryn Kuhlman or maybe you're young
enough you missed her, you can still when you
go to YouTube and you can watch videos and
you can still see-- I remember as a boy
watching, I was never in a Kathryn Kuhlman
meeting but I remember playing and running
through the house and stopping because my
parents had the TV on in the middle of the day
which is unheard of and it was Kathryn Kuhlman. I just was almost locked
in like what is going on? What is she doing? And to this day, if I
see something, I will be locked in and focused
because I'm like there was such a power and
it's that apprehension --what is going
to happen next? It's like always, like right,
what is she going to do? Here it is all
these years later. What is she going to do? Yes, she was unique. We're all, everybody
is unique in their way. You learn that
too, later. But being a young
person and never seeing anything like that. I mean, today you
have so many different personalities so she
would blend in more today, I
think. I really do. But then, in a small
town outside of Pittsburgh, a
blue-collar town, where everything was in a
hard-working labor steel mill plain-vanilla
chocolate, strawberry, here comes this lady
in a white gown. Have you been waiting? I've been
waiting for you. Have you been waiting
for me, it's just like wow,
it was just so way
over the top for
me. So I began to
take my friends
down to meet
her. I would take my
friends down
because they couldn't
believe it. Understanding revivals
is a big task. and it's one when I started
diving into learning more...one thing
led to the next and led to the
next and it's almost a
daunting task to be able to understand
all about what happened in our
history when it comes to what
God did throughout history with the
revivals. What have we done? We've taken our time and we
developped a website right here behind me Now this is--of course it's on a
big monitor but you can use this on your
computer. It will work on your phone and
your iPad or whatever tablet
you've got. You can go to all
of this and all that what I'm
talking about will work on it. But let me show you
one feature Now here is in 1837,
talking about the armenian revival--if I just
scroll down here... Look, here we are. Here is
William Seymour, Azusa
Street, 1870. So when you see this,
you say, "Well I want to know more about
William Seymour." Well I click on
"more" Now look at this.
I have... I have a history
of him. There is 138 stories
right here that I can click on and
learn more about William Seymour and the
revival. Now there is another way to
do this. Let's go back here. Let's
say you don't like the
way this... Look I can click
here and I can go to a
3D version and on this version, I
can go through time
like this. So you see I can go
through all. There is Voronae. It's
talking about history, facility
in Russia. You can just go through
history and understand what
happened with the
revivals. Go to the website, sign up and
join us. ♪♪[MusicÑ♪
