Joe King: A key figure in the British worshipping Church

Tuesday 30th October 2018

Tony Cummings quizzed the Leeds-based music visionary, JOE KING



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Also, after God's power erupted in the meeting in February 1995, he and his wife Sara started to do personal prayer ministry in their home. He admitted, "Since 1995, my wife and I have ministered to hundreds of people. People would make a financial donation to my ministry for the time I gave the recipients of the ministry. Eventually this became the main focus of my ministry and particularly from 2005 the itinerant part of my ministry decreased. One of the main areas of the one-to-one prayer ministry has been sexual abuse, often Satanic ritual abuse or sex abuse which frequently takes place against children in Masonic lodges." Joe shares a disturbing testimony of someone he and his wife were able to help. The testimony reads: "I was sexually abused as a child. I became a Christian aged 16, but never had the opportunity to sort emotional issues out. I was involved in gay relationships seeking to find my own solution to love and loneliness. I finally decided that I could not live without God and would choose to be on my own rather than compromise any more. During the prayer, I knew idolatry was the issue. The 'idol' was my previous partner. When I realised how much I'd hurt God I became very distressed, sobbing from the depths of me. As I was anointed with oil, there was this amazing wave of being filled into deep places with God's Spirit. I was rolling around the floor laughing and giggling. It's amazing how many people have commented on the changes in me, how my countenance has softened. The fruit of this is me accepting myself and God's personal love for me. With this has come weight loss, nearly three stone. A big part of my healing has been me accepting responsibility, not just expecting God to do all the work."

Joe also became fairly skilled at dealing with the effects of Freemasonry in people. Over the years he has conducted many conferences called Freedom From Freemasonry. One of a number of testimonies emanating from such conferences is quoted here: "After Joe's Freedom From Freemasonry course the Lord released me from migraines. I was amazed and still am. I had migraines for 40 years, one or two per week."

Also after 1995, Joe developed healing and deliverance training programmes where people came both to receive healing and deliverance but also learn how to administer it to others. The testimonies from those conferences were astonishing, like this one: "Two years ago I broke both major bones in my wrist and had to have it reset at an unusual angle, which resulted in very limited movement of my wrist and fingers. After prayer on the Saturday evening, I awoke Sunday to find I had full range of movement in my wrist and fingers and my wrist was once again in the correct position."

In 1997, Joe was contacted by someone connected to James Dobson's Focus On The Family organisation in Colorado Springs. Joe explained, "She had been given a copy of 'Next To You' and was observing God using the songs in an amazing way in the conferences she was leading. She invited me to come to Colorado to minister. My wife Sara and I then made many subsequent trips, twice a year for about seven weeks each time. We normally took a ministry team with us. We ministered in the USA for almost 10 years. God's favour on us was incredible. Everything we did seemed to turn to gold. On each seven-week trip we were busy nearly every day. I made numerous TV appearances. We saw God perform incredible miracles. After doing a concert, leading worship or teaching/training about healing, I would invite people forward for prayer and the place would look like a battlefield, with most of the congregation lying on the floor under the power of God. We saw many hundreds of people healed and delivered." Joe subsequently received numerous testimonies of the congregations' encounters with God. The following one is typical: "God has healed me of my 30 years of suffering from monthly migraines. Doctors told me I wouldn't be free of them as they were 'hormone related', but through the power of the Holy Spirit moving in your prayers, healing is complete. I've not suffered another migraine since. When you anointed me and prayed against the guilt that weighed me down through the years, I felt the band around my head lifted off, as if a cap was being removed. I renounced that guilt and joy filled my soul as I lay on the ground in a bath of the Holy Spirit. My prayer life and Bible study have been much more fruitful since and my passion to pray for the sick and needy has borne fruit."

In 1998, Alliance released the Joe King album, 'The Harvest Has Begun'. Produced by Chris Eton, the Cross Rhythms reviewer praised the Celtic-tinged "Stand Your Ground" which, along with "I Still Believe In You" and "Father", were Joe's favourites. Speaking about 'The Harvest Has Begun', the singer/songwriter said, "It's my wife's favourite album and many people comment about the strength of the lyrics." Some of the many powerful lyrics were on "Stand Your Ground": "Paint me heartless; call me cruel, that's how I appear to be/Every time I lead to the crucifixion tree/For to be the overcomer that I want you to become/Means I'm gonna have to give you things to overcome/Stand your ground, stand your ground/Every time trouble comes around/Don't you allow him to bring you down."

Equally arresting is the warts and all confessional contained in "Father": "Father, when the night draws in/When my hopes grow dim/When my torch is flickering/Father, help me keep my nerve/Help me trust without reserve."

Joe's 2001 album, 'Eye Of The Storm', has been described as "an encouragement to the Church". It had a strong Celtic sound. He said, "The Celtic influence is in my bones because I'm essentially Irish. I don't feel English at all. I grew up listening to my dad's IRA protest songs which he played on most Sunday afternoons. I gather from folks at UCB that 'Don't Give In' was the most played song on their radio station for a couple of years after the album was released. Sadly, I never saw a penny of royalties from it." The lyrics on 'Eye Of The Storm' are, as usual, laced with Joe's insight and wisdom, such as on "Don't Give In" ("If the world's on top of you/And you don't know what to do/Stand upon the promises of God/If you're tempted to despair/You've just got to hang in there/Stand upon the promises of God") and "Still I'm Trusting In You" ("When my streams have dried/When my fire has died/When my rose is fading/Still, I'm trusting in you/So come good, come ill/Life, do what you will/Though I understand not/Still, I'm trusting in you").

By 2003, Joe was one of the thousands of artists finding that they could release albums independently without the help, and sometimes the mismanagement, of a record label. His 'When Heaven Comes Down' touched on one of the most important of all subjects in this era of world-wide expectation for revival. Explained Joe, "The song 'When Heaven Comes Down' is a picture of what revival will look like. I've been praying for a national revival for years. I believe we're very close to seeing the greatest spiritual awakening the world has ever seen. What some of us experienced through the Toronto Blessing in the '90s is like the spray at the top of a wave. What we're about to witness is the wave. We are in countdown mode. God's hand is on the switch. But we have to be careful because as I discovered in many churches who experienced the Toronto Blessing, God has been absent from the Church for so long that when he turns up people think it's the Devil. Many churches are not used to God coming, even a little bit. They won't want the spiritual river that's coming because they can't build with it, control it and also, the river causes people to lose their dignity. I've seen many churches resisting moves of God. It's as if they're saying, 'I don't understand it, so let's stop it!' They make themselves the final authority. It's so arrogant to presume we know the ways of God. Arthur Wallis said, 'If you see a revival that is not spoken against by the Church, you better look again to see if it's revival.' 1 Thessalonians 5:19 says, 'Do not quench the Spirit.' This was written to Christians because that's what we do! Even the godliest of people can, in an unguarded moment, put on the spectacles of pride and criticism and see only error. We can so fear the false that we shun the true. Control means that we want things done in such a way that we can cope with it. As in the middle '90s, God is about to offend the mind to reveal the heart. We're about to witness manifestations of and reactions to the presence of God that are way off our map. Finney had an angel, one of the seven Spirits of God, called The Fear of the Lord so that when he was with people hundreds came under conviction of sin. Sampson had an angel called The Spirit of Might. David's mighty men also had this angel. God is about to release myriads of these kinds of angels under the authority of each of the seven Spirits of God, carrying the same anointing. For instance, little children will have the Spirit of Knowledge and they'll leave us for dead! God is about to come and people are going to be either glad, sad or mad."

Equally arresting is the song "God Of Love, God Of Power". Joe is particularly forthright in his comments about this song: "There's enough power in us to kill us but there's too much insulation. I know this sounds harsh but I think many of our churches should be prosecuted by the Trade Descriptions Act because we don't do what it says on the tin! We sing and talk about God's power but we rarely see it on a consistent basis. Many are involved in really good programmes to do with conveying God's love to society but it saddens me when you talk to the same people about God's power they become nervous. In Matthew 14, Jesus had compassion and he healed the multitudes. Powerless compassion is no good. Christianity is more than a wonderful set of values. We're called to help people beyond our own capabilities. The foundation of the New Testament Christians' belief system was in miracles, signs and wonders: 'My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom but on God's power' (1 Cor.2:4). A major mind-shift is about to happen in the Body of Christ. God wanted not just Moses to move in the supernatural but all of his people. Like many in our churches today, the people of Israel wanted the special ones to do it. They came to the bottom of the mountain, saw the power of God and said no thanks. Our work is to depopulate Hell and populate Heaven. I believe the best way to do that is through a demonstration of God's power, as well as his love. After Canaan it says God glorified himself through that miracle. Signs and wonders are the commonest way in Scripture that God glorifies himself."

Joe and Sara, 2001
Joe and Sara, 2001

In 2005, Joe received an invitation to relocate to the USA. He explained, "I was going to minister part-time for a church and the rest of the time I would be itinerant. We were selling our house in the UK and had bought a house which was being built, overlooking the Rocky Mountains. People were saying, 'You're going to live your dreams.' My humorous response was, 'I don't want to live my dreams because I don't want to be naked in an exam I haven't prepared for.' Joking aside, we went out to finalise details only to discover that the church in Denver hadn't processed the immigration forms correctly and as a result we had lost our religious visa status. Unbelievably, we had to leave the country immediately! We tried to redeem the situation, paying thousands of dollars to lawyers in the USA, and later in the UK, but to no avail. However, the night before we left Denver, a friend urged us to meet with an old prophet who said he had a message from God for us. I was reluctant to meet anyone because we were busy packing and were devastated at having to leave the country. The elderly prophet said that God was bringing us home for family reasons. That didn't mean anything to me but it turned out to be completely accurate and saved me from getting bitter about seeing our dreams turn to dust. Within 10 days of arriving back in Leeds, my mum had a nasty fall in her home in Manchester which required a major operation. This issued in a period of over five years of ill health before she died. During that time, I travelled back-and-forth between Leeds to Manchester to look after her and dad. Dad also soon became ill and they eventually died within six months of each other. If we had bought the house in Denver, it would have been a nightmare scenario with my incapacitated parents."

In 2008, Joe released a 10-track album, 'I Will Always Love You'. The first five tracks were songs originally released on Joe's 'Next To You' album but recorded in a very different style, and the next five were those tracks mixed without the vocals. He explained, "These will act as backing tracks for anyone wanting to perform the songs," but that the vocal-less tracks were an aid to help people to soak in God's presence. The soaking movement has become a significant part of the activity of the world-wide worshipping Church. Joe defined soaking in God's presence: "'Soaking' is a term used to describe the practice of waiting expectantly on God, while inviting him to fill you with his love, rather than striving in prayer. It is a practice lost to the greater part of the Church for centuries while it was consumed with religious activities. The Apostle Paul called it being 'filled with all the fullness of God.' It means letting God rise up on the inside of you to soak your dry soul. It is a form of contemplative prayer, having an attitude of stillness, focusing on Jesus and being open to the Holy Spirit. It means positioning yourself to wait on God without an agenda and saying, 'Lord, I come to seek your face, not your hand of power or your feet of direction.' Soaking is really about resting in God the Father's love."

The 2012 EP, 'Longing', is described as "a prophetic piano album" and was again specifically created for soaking sessions. Among the tracks is an instrumental version of the song "I Still Believe In You", originally recorded on 'The Harvest Has Begun' album but now expanded to an instrumental rendition of nearly 15 minutes. Joe is adamant that such sessions can cultivate intimacy with the Lord. He said, "God wants to lead you to a place of rest from which you live your life. He wants you to burn on, not burn out. For some, it's time to come apart or fall apart. I wish I had learned this at the beginning of my ministry. It would have saved me many stress related issues. Learning to soak will give you longevity both physically and spiritually. As you learn to be still, the flurry around you will settle and clarity will come."

Joe spoke about his 2015 project, 'Stars In Every Corner'. "On this album, there are seven songs followed by instrumental versions of four of the songs. I've done this so that after the seven songs, the listener can use the instrumental music to soak in God's presence." His comments on the album lead into the tendency of the modern church to substitute busyness for intimacy. He said, "More than ever before in history, people are busying themselves with electronic distractions and numerous activities that require rushing back and forth. This can erode your passion for the 'secret place' where you can find peace in your Father's arms. Are you so busy because intimacy with anyone, let alone God, is difficult for you? Hurting people hurt people. Avoiding intimacy with God is a sign of hurt. So, before you try to love others, first get healed and full of God's love yourself. You can't give away what you haven't received."

Joe continued, "We're human beings, not human doings. Prior to Jesus' ministry, his Father pronounced, 'This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.' God was pleased with his Son and he hadn't done anything significant yet. Similarly, you are God's child and he loves you just for who you are, before you do anything. It is more important to 'be' than to 'do'. Doing comes out of being. God calls himself 'I AM' not 'I DO'. God wants your love, not merely your labour. He wants lovers not labourers. We are not saved to serve. Before God can work through you he must first work in you. He doesn't want you to work for him but to walk with him. He doesn't want you to live for him but from him. He doesn't want men and women of God, he wants children of God. Soaking refocuses us on the simplicity of that Father-child relationship."

Cross Rhythms asked why Joe's recorded output has dwindled away somewhat in recent years. He responded, "To be frank, I was producing albums costing about £10,000 to make but it was taking me years to break even, let alone make a profit. Without a record company behind me, I struggled with distribution and marketing. After the USA door closed in 2005, where most of my ministry took place, rightly or wrongly, back in the UK a lot of my time went into developing other aspects of my ministry such as healing and as a trainer in the supernatural. I also felt that God was telling me that growth comes from dying not from doing. In 1995 a highly renowned prophet prophesied over me: 'Oh, oh, such a training that you're going through still, such a discipline but your hour is coming. You will not always be restricted. God will bring the release. . .' I believe the release he talked about has not yet come. In the book of Daniel chapter four, Nebuchadnezzar, after only 12 months, had gone from giving glory to God to giving glory to himself. God has been showing me that he wants to promote many in the Church but can we handle it? We may have talent enough to get us somewhere but not enough character to keep us there. God may be protecting us against public victories because of lack of private victories. Ministry should validate our spirituality. Therefore, recently I have entered into a season of giving everything back to God. As from Christmas I'm stopping everything apart from worship. My prime aim is to wait on God. God has promised that there will be another significant chapter in my life, so I need to prepare for that eventuality."

The multi-faceted nature of Joe's ministry down the decades has required an extraordinary amount of perseverance. His final comment pinpointed the flexibility and perseverance this most gifted of prophet musicians has needed to deal with the changing tasks and challenges he has been called to face. "One of the main themes of my life, ministry and songs is perseverance. We rarely see our own growth, but others can and many of us have grown because of the fertilizer of pain - and like fertilizer, it stinks! Jesus was sent into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, and He overcame, returning in the power of the Holy Spirit. God is about to send forth those who have persevered in the wilderness and learned to overcome. The Lord says, 'It's time for the overcomers to arise!'" CR

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.
About Tony Cummings
Tony CummingsTony Cummings is the music editor for Cross Rhythms website and attends Grace Church in Stoke-on-Trent.


 
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