BASSETERRE St. Kitts, August 2nd, 2012 -- The number forty, holds great significance in the Bible. For Reverend Dr. Allan S. Issac, Visionary/Senior Pastor of Rivers of Living Water Christian Centre, it is no wonder that celebrating forty years of preaching is quite a milestone for him.
In the Bible, the number forty often illustrates a time of trial and testing: Israel was tested by God in the wilderness for forty years, Jesus spent forty days and forty nights of prayer and fasting in the desert and was tested by Satan, Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights to receive the tablets of stone with the teachings and the commandments, and Jonah warned the city of Nineveh they had forty days until God overthrew the city. The people repented in those forty days and God spared the city.
Only sixteen years old when he started preaching in April of 1972, Reverend Isaac has had his moments of trial and testing but has remained faithful to the Gospel in season and out of season.
“I have had no second thoughts of backsliding. I don’t know why people backslide.” Reverend Isaac said. “Anything I come into, my level of commitment just goes into it. It’s like me and the thing become one, it’s the same with my marriage and it’s the same with our church.”
However, he admits that he “was running away from church” before he was baptized at fifteen years old.
Over the forty years of his preaching career, Reverend Isaac spent 20 years as a Pastor in the Wesleyan Holiness Church, abandoning it in 1991. On August 13, 1995, Reverend Isaac along with his wife Debbie, founded Rivers of Living Water Christian Centre in their home at Shadwell Gardens.
Reverend Isaac believes that the main purpose of preaching is to save souls and says that in his preaching career saving souls has been his single-minded goal.
“The number one thing is always seeing a life changed; to see someone transition from the kingdom of darkness into God’s Kingdom, that’s my greatest joy,” he said.
His preaching mission has taken him to six continents, where he has planted seeds of the Gospel into many people’s lives. He says that he has always depended on the Holy Spirit for direction and to bring about results in people’s lives.
“The key has always been depending on the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit knows the people more than I do,” said Reverend Isaac.
“Even though I have been preaching for forty years, there is not a time when I just opened the Bible and decided that I wanted to preach this. It is always, Holy Spirit what would you have me share?”
One of the greatest challenges over the years is seeing a member leave the faith, Reverend Isaac said.
“The number one challenge is when you take time building, mentoring, maturing, developing an individual and they just go after years of performing so well into the total opposite. I can never understand that,” he said.
But, by and large, the joys far outweigh the challenges and the challenges have served to make Reverend Isaac even more connected to God. Since the inception of Rivers of Living Water Christian Centre in 1995, the church has grown tremendously.
“Over the years, we have had people pouring into us and training us. In the initial stages of our church, we travelled quite a bit to seminars in Canada, United States and anywhere there was training in the Caribbean.
We were there because we always feel that people need to be exposed to the larger picture, so that they can function not only in the micro dimension but on a larger scale. You’re doing something small but you’re making it big,” stated Reverend Isaac.
Forty years may seem like a long time, and it is, but for Reverend Isaac preaching God’s Word is what he was called to do and the years have helped him to remain faithful each day as a servant of God.
“The fact that I’m preaching to people means that I have to live before those people so that they do not have a problem with my preaching,” he said.
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