VENTURA — Internationally known evangelist Oral Roberts, preaching a message of financial prosperity Sunday to hundreds of believers, said he hasn't always lived in a land of milk and honey.
Making his first speaking appearance in Ventura, Roberts, who has a vacation home in Newport Beach, told those gathered at Solid Rock Christian Center that life was very tough for a young minister starting out in Tulsa, Okla., after World War II.
But just as the Lord has blessed him and his ministry over the years, Roberts told the ethnically diverse audience, such financial blessings are destined for believers who have faith and follow the biblical principles of tithing and giving.
"You are to have a car. You are to have money. You are to have things that people need to possess the land, do you hear me?" Roberts asked the enthusiastic crowd of nearly 600. "You must have faith in your heart right now that you are going to possess something."
So many people attended the 10:30 a.m. service to listen to Roberts that about 100 of them had to catch the sermon on a large-screen television set up in an overflow room.
"You are a book that God is now writing," Roberts told them. "You are a poem that God is now composing. You are a dream that God is now dreaming. You are a miracle about to explode."
During his hourlong sermon, Roberts prophesied that three people in the audience would become millionaires within the next six months.
Wearing a brown suit, accessorized with a gold bracelet and turquoise pinky ring, Roberts looked much younger than his 80 years as he recalled his days of poverty before going on to establish a worldwide healing ministry and university in Tulsa that bears his name.
He and his wife, Evelyn, who accompanied him Sunday, were virtually penniless when they arrived in Tulsa in 1947, he said.
"When we got to Tulsa, we had a car, $300 worth of furniture and $25--and children," he said. "There was nothing to rent for $25 and nothing to buy."
When they arrived, Roberts said, the pastor of the church he would work for invited him to stay in a small, two-bedroom house he wanted to sell.
Roberts said God told him: "This is your house." But then the pastor told Roberts that he had just arranged to sell the house to someone else.
"God, my pastor just sold my house," he recalled saying in prayer. Roberts said he drove to a park, stopped the car and cried.
