Dr. Larry Martin has given 49 years to gospel ministry and has traveled to over sixty nations. He has spent almost twenty-five years pastoring churches in Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, and Tennessee. While still in his teens, Martin launched his ministry career as a traveling evangelist. He returned to evangelism in 1997 and has continued in that work for most of the last 20 years. He is a church historian with expertise in the origins of Pentecostalism with a particular emphasis on the revival at Azusa Street.
Websites:
https://www.pentecostalgold.com – Pentecostal Gold features sermons from R.W. Schambach, Aimee Semple McPherson, David Wilkerson, T.L. Osborn, Jimmy Swaggart, George O. Wood, and many others. It contains over 2000 sermons, 200 preachers, 40 topics, and 8 decades of Pentecostal ministry.
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Dr. Larry Martin has been in ministry for over 50 years. He’s been a revivalist, a pastor, an evangelist, and he’s a Pentecostal historian. I’m excited to hear what he has to say about the Holy spirit.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:16):
Jesus said go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Welcome to the evangelism podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews, full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies, and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary and evangelist Daniel King. Welcome
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:53):
The evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited to tell people about Jesus today. I have a very special guest, Dr. Larry Martin. He has been in ministry over almost 50 years. He’s traveled to over 60 nations. He spent 25 years, pastoring churches and Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, and Tennessee. And while he was still in his teens, he launched out as a traveling evangelist and then he returned to evangelism in 1997. And he’s continued that for the last 20 plus years. Dr. Larry Martin is a church historian with expertise in the origins of Pentecostalism with a particular emphasis on the revival at Azusa street. Dr. Martin, thank you so much for joining me today.
Larry Martin (01:42):
Thank you, Daniel. It’s great to be with you.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:44):
Well, let’s start at the point where we met it was in Ethiopia. I was there to do a great gospel crusade with my friend pear Rockfest and you are friends with brother pear as well. And we got to know one another. Do you remember that?
Larry Martin (02:06):
Yes, sir. So very well. Yeah.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:09):
And, and so we had a wonderful time that week. Thousands of people gave their, their lives to Jesus. And you told me about your, your dream of doing large crusades and you never done large crusades before. And and we had a conversation. Can you kind of tell me about that conversation and, and what came out of it?
Larry Martin (02:35):
Oh, absolutely love to. First of all, it was such a pleasure Daniel to meet you and be part of that great gospel festival that you hosted there. I had came to Ethiopia the previous year to work with pear and teach it his Bible school. And he invited me to come back the next year, I came back and taught in the school for a week and was doing evangelism in local churches. And you guys were coming for the crusade and Perry invited me to kind of tag along and carry the bags. As it ended up, you carried about bags up several flight of stairs one day. And I, I still am grateful for that, but we enjoyed the meeting and there was just something in my heart that I I’d, I’d always thought it dreamed of preaching and, and great meetings like that.
Larry Martin (03:24):
And didn’t know exactly how to get my foot in the door or what was the first step. And so after the meeting, we met in the cafe at the hotel where we were staying in and I asked you how you did it. And, and I said, do you have big sponsors? Do you have someone that’s paying for this? And you said, well, every time we have a meeting, we just trust God and God provides. And that was such an amazing faith statement to me. I thought, well, if, if Daniel King can do that, I’ve been preaching all these years. I believe I could trust God to do that. And you are such a blessing inspiration to me, Daniel. And the next year we scheduled a crusade at that time. It cost us $20,000. That was a huge amount of money for us to raise back.
Larry Martin (04:09):
God provided. And we stepped out by faith and the money came in. We did the crusade and we’ve been doing crusades ever since. And I just wanted to say, thank you to you for being so kind to us and hospitable and generous. And not only did you inspire me to have faith, to trust God for crusades, but at that table, you gave me copies of every book that you had written the digital copies of how to raise money and how to do crusades. And I just appreciate your spirit, man. You’re, you’re a great young man and your followers here need to know what a, what a fine young man Daniel King is and what a great work you’re doing for God. Okay.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:47):
Well, thank you so much. I’m just so delighted with, with what God has been doing through your ministry in, in starting to do crusades. Since that time, approximately how many crusades have you been able to do? You, you started out doing just one a year and then you bumped it up and started to doing more than one a year. So how many different crusades have you done so far?
Larry Martin (05:10):
We’ve done. I think eight crusades in Ethiopia and one in Brazil, we were scheduled to do three crusades in 2020, but of course with COVID we did we actually were going to do four, three big crusades in one small, and we ended up, we got to do the Ethiopia crusade in January, and then March. I went to me and Mar for a smaller crusade there in a church. And that’s when COVID stopped everything and kind of grounded us. So we’re looking forward to getting back out there this year.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:40):
It will come and your crusades will be bigger and better than ever before. I believe that even God, for that, the name of your ministry is a river of revival ministries. And so you have a great love for revival and revival preaching and churches all over the United States. And, and you’ve published quite a few books about revival. You’ve published books by Leonard Ravenhill by Winkie Pratney. And about the, the Azusa street revival about William Seymour. Talk to me a little bit about revival and why it’s so important to have revival in the church.
Larry Martin (06:21):
Well you know, if somebody’s walking through the airport and they have a heart attack or their heart stops beating, the first thing that someone’s going to do is look for a defibrillator that they can come and shock that person back to life. And I think that’s kind of the, one of the roles of revival is, and I don’t want to say the church is dead, but the church does go through seasons where they become lax and complacent where they become a spiritually eel and a revivalist is a lack that defibrillator that shocks the church back to life and brings a new vitality and new, new faith that I think there’s nothing more important in the life of the church than periodical seasons of revival when God sends refreshing from Ohio and, and recharges the church, we need a great nationwide revival in America today.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:16):
Yeah. Talk, talk to me a little bit about that because as we record this, we just went through an election and then the, the inauguration of our new president, Joe Biden, and a lot of people are, are concerned about where America is as a nation. What do you do you think God wants to do in our nation, in the church?
Larry Martin (07:41):
Well, I think I know what God wants to do. God always wants to, to revive the church. He always wants the church to have a evangelism focus, reaching the lost and a disciple ship, focus, strengthening believers. God’s part is not hard to define. It’s getting us in, in step with God’s program, getting us in step with what God wants is really the answer. God would love to send a great revival to America, and I pray that he will. And you know, by faith, I believe that a revival is coming, but there’s two elements of revival and the, and God’s part is always wonderful and perfect, and he’s always ready, but man’s part, sometimes it’s weakened and Leonard Ravenhill off and said, the reason we didn’t have revivals, cause we didn’t want it bad enough. And I think when the church really gets a burger to see God move and really gets a burden to pray that we will see that visitation in America. I’m sure believing God for that.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:40):
Yeah. You mentioned Leonard Ravenhill and I have several books, which you’ve given me that you’ve published from Leonard Ravenhill. How, how did you get permission to publish books
Larry Martin (08:56):
At that point? Daniel the books were out of print and the publishing company was not printing those books. And so I wrote them and asked permission to make them available through our ministry. And they granted that to me the, at this time that the publishers actually have given that permission back to brother Raven Hill’s family. And so I’m not able to publish those anymore, but I was very thankful for the opportunity to share those while they were out of print.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:26):
Talk to me more about revival. You’ve been a student or revival you’ve experienced revival. You, you, you go to churches and, and re preach revival. What are some of the elements that that happen when revival comes?
Larry Martin (09:45):
Sure. you know, people will ask the question, what’s the secret to revival and I tell them, God doesn’t deal in secrets. He deals in revelations. It’s just a matter of finding what God has said about it. And when God does sin revival, some of the things that happens, of course, there’s always a disruption. God disrupts evil a disrupts complacency. He disrupts the sleepiness in the church and the devil always gets mad when you have revival. That’s I always tell people that I believe that the initial physical evidence of baptism, the Holy spirit is, is tongues, but the real evidence is troubled because when you get on fire for God, the devil is going to attack you. And a sign of revival is when, when the enemy comes against the church and another sign of revival is maybe the greatest sign of revival.
Larry Martin (10:37):
The church is repentance. If there is no repentance, there will be no revival. If there’s a little repentance, you might have a little revival, but when there’s, when there is great repentance, there is great revival. I, I wrote a little acrostic for revival and the, the lenders in revival R stands for repentance and East stands for everyday repentance. And B stands for very repented and asked stands for immediate repentance and B the second least has for very, very repented and the, the A is for always repentant and the L is for lasting repentance. And that, that is what happens when you have revival, the church repents. And then of course their signs and wonders miracles that take place. When you have revival, people receive the baptism, the Holy spirit, and the greatest of all is people are saved. There’s no real revival until the lost are brought to Christ.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:30):
I, I see a pattern there. And in your acrostic for revival, it seems that repentance is an important part of revival. Talk to me a little bit about repentance. How does someone repent? How does revival bring repentance?
Larry Martin (11:47):
I think in in normal church life, we, we get very careless. I use this example sometime Daniel I had a friend that was remodeling in his bathroom. And when he got ready to paint a wall that he’d been working on and he was going to paint it white because the rest of the bathroom was white. And when he painted the wall wide, he found out the rest of the bathroom, wasn’t white, it was off white. And so it didn’t match, but he thought it was white all the time until he compared it to white. And when the Holy Spirit begins to move and the Holy Spirit begins to deal in people’s heart, he begins to reveal things to them that they thought were okay, you know what I’m I’m okay. You’re okay. Everybody’s okay. But you really get in the presence of God. And your lack Isaiah was when he saw the Lord and said, man, I I’m unclean. And I live in a land of uncleaned people. And when we see ourselves, as God sees us, that brings us to a place of repentance where we, we seek God to purify our hearts and make us more like him.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:47):
You are also a Pentecostal historian, you’ve studied church history. And one of the things I really love about your ministry, you, you have a website called Pentecostal gold.com. And on that website, you have a sermons from some of the greatest Pentecostal preachers from the last 80 years. You’ve got RW, Schambach, Amy simple McPherson, David Wilkerson, TL Osborn, Jimmy Swagget, George O. Wood and many others tell me a little bit about Pentecostal golden and how you started that. The website,
Larry Martin (13:29):
I just got a vision, I guess it’s been seven, eight years ago now that it would be a wonderful thing. I, I had collected these cassette tapes all my life throughout all my ministry had boxes of them. And I thought, well, if we could just share these with people and found a little recorder to digitalize those and started putting one or two up, and now I’ve got almost 2,400 sermons up. I put three sermons up this morning by Dr. Daniel T Schaffer. Did you know Dr. Shaffer from Oklahoma city? Never heard of him. Great pastor pastored, crossroads cathedral in Oklahoma city at church seated about 5,000 people. And I put three of Dr. Dan’s sermons up there today. Yesterday. I put some sermons up by BH Clendenin while I’m pretty well stationed at home because of COVID. I’ve been spending a lot of time building this website and I just pray. It’s a blessing to the body of Christ when I’m, when I’m gone. And you know, I’m, I’m 68 years old when I’m gone. I want this website to continue to minister to the bodily of grass, for generations to come.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:36):
And I think future generations need to hear the Pentecostal fire that came across in the Holy roller generation. Sometimes we don’t hear that type of preaching that much anymore, but we still need that same fire of the Holy spirit. What are some of your, your favorite preachers and your, your favorite sermons on the website? What’s really ministered to you personally?
Larry Martin (15:04):
Every one of them. I, no, that’s not a fair answer. My, my favorite sermon on the website is in 1969. My pastor took me to the general council, the SIM as a God. I was just a teenager and Jimmy Swaggart preached that night. And it was the greatest sermon I ever heard. If you can imagine at a general council, the same as the guy, the power of God came down and people, one guy was running around the building, shouting. It was quite amazing. And that sermon was unavailable for many years. I bought a copy of it on an old reel to reel tape. And I couldn’t get access to that, but I contacted the Springfield Missouri. They didn’t have a copy of the sermon brothers Schrager didn’t have a copy of it, but I finally found that old tape that I bought back in the sixties and digitalize it. And it’s called, there is a remedy. That’s one of my favorites. The other, I guess my second favorite sermon on the website is one that David Wilkerson preached it’s called the gospel of accommodation. And if there was ever a prophetic word preached to the, to the Pentecostal movement, that is a tremendous word, the gospel of accommodation. And you know, of course the brothers sham box messages and AA Allen, I just they’re just wonderful.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:21):
Your ministry has published a lot of historical documents from various revivals in the past. And so one of your books is called the Topeka outpouring of, of 1901. And then you have a whole stack of books about the Azusa street revival that happened in the early 19 hundreds and the spread Pentecostalism around the world. You’ve got books from your own experiences and, and also from the great Welsh revival. If someone wants to get a hold of, of some of your books, what’s the best way for them to order some books.
Larry Martin (17:01):
All, all the books are available on Amazon Daniel, but they’re also available through our websites. I would suggest that Azusa street.org, the bookstore there has all the books available on it. Thank you for mentioning that. Yeah.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:16):
Yeah. And if a pastor wants to invite you to come and have a revival in his church, or if someone wants to support one of your crusades and help send you to the world, how can they find you?
Larry Martin (17:32):
That would be the best way for that. It’s Dr. Larry martin.org. That’s our, our ministry website. Sometimes you get a note from a pastor and he’ll say, what does it take to bring you to our church? And I will answer an invitation and we don’t, we don’t have any requirements. We just love to go preach the gospel.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:52):
Well, that’s a wonderful attitude to have. How many years have you been traveling and preaching the gospel?
Larry Martin (18:00):
From the first time that I preached, it’s been 54 years.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:04):
That’s amazing. What, what a tremendous legacy you have what you’ve been doing this a long time and many of our listeners are preachers evangelists who are just getting started in ministry. What advice would you give to a young minister? Who’s just starting out about longevity in ministry.
Larry Martin (18:32):
I think well, that’s a, that’s a tough question. I think the first thing is to be sure of your call. You know, the Lord spoke to me, I would say youth camp and I never dreamed I was going to be a preacher. Never dreamed it. I, I thought maybe I would be an archeologist. You know, I love history and, and dinosaurs and all these things and sitting in a youth camp and God, the, the, the speaker was Dr. George Brazel. You can hear him open it calls to go. But Dr. Braswell said to all of you that are called to the ministry, I want you to come to the front and immediately, God just tapped me on the shoulder and said, that’s you, I want you to preach the gospel. And I went up that night and surrendered to preaching. And that calling was so sure, you know, Daniel and 50 plus years, I’ve been through some stuff.
Larry Martin (19:20):
And now I’ll tell you a lot of it was tough. I’ve had great blessings, wonderful, blessed things, but I’ve been through some tough stuff. And that call is the thing that’s kept me steady. I, I there’s times that I’d like to have quit, but there’s never been a single time that I doubted that God called me to the ministry. And that’s been, the anchor for me is to stay steadfast. And of course, you know, the, the, the everybody should know is the time you spend with the Lord and prayer, and then reading the word of God. Those are the things that carry you through the difficult times.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:56):
Thank you so much, Dr. Larry Martin, it’s wonderful to have you as a guest on, on the evangelism podcast. Love you love your ministry and everything that you are doing for Jesus. Thank you.
Larry Martin (20:11):
We love you, Daniel. Thank you for allowing me to be here today.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:15):
Thanks so much for listening to this interview with Dr. Larry Martin. If you’ve enjoyed the evangelism podcast, could you do me a favor, go find the evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a review that review will help other people find the podcast and make sure that you subscribe because we’ve got some exciting interviews coming up
Evangelism Podcast Host (20:39):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches. Visit King ministries.com. Again, that’s King ministries.com.
