“I saw people coming to the living waters, but I didn’t see living water flowing back out of them,” he adds. “I saw them becoming at best a reservoir instead of a river. I saw people hanging in there, keeping a stiff upper lip, just toughing it out. But they were being defeated.”
Robison said that it was not just the defeat he saw in the lives of people he ministered to, but the defeat that he experienced in his own life that led to a crisis point. He became so miserable that he contemplated suicide. He was a man out of control, a man tormented.
“I couldn’t control my appetite,” he says. “I’m 6-foot-3 and I’ve never looked fat, but I gained so much weight I wouldn’t wear a three-piece suit for fear I’d take a deep breath and pop a button. It’s no laughing matter when you can’ t control your craving for chocolate or ice cream.”
It wasn’t just food that Robison had trouble controlling. He was plagued with unclean thoughts. “As I would preach, many times I would look at women eye-to-eye in the congregation. Demon spirits began to talk to me and, to my horror, I found I was unable to stop them. It got so bad that I have sat on platforms afraid to look up, knowing what I would see.”
“I knew then something had to happen to give me mental relief. What I needed was deliverance—but I didn’t even know it was a possibility.”
Robison also confesses that much of the anger in his preaching—what he considered “righteous indignation,” was really just “meanness of the devil.”
“I would get up to preach and I would think that the unction of the Spirit had come upon me,” he says. “I would go into a rage and lash out at everybody. I thought it was the power of the Holy Spirit, but I found that this kind of rage is not the Holy Spirit.”
It was Robison’s raging against sin that got him embroiled in controversy on more than one occasion. Four years ago he attracted national attention when he instituted a court challenge of the Federal Communication Commission’s fairness doctrine. He was upset by an interpretation of the standard by a Dallas TV station, WFAA, which canceled Robison’s Sunday morning program after he made continued attacks on homosexuality.
The homosexuality issue was the last in a series of confrontations between Robison and WFAA. Station management had been upset with him in 1975 when he gave a series of sermons on “false faith,” and mentioned certain cults by name. And in 1977, Robison’ s show was canceled briefly after he specifically attacked a gay church in Ft. Worth, Texas.
Today Robison says, “I’ve not lost any of my authority. I’ve not lost any boldness in dealing with sin. It’s just that I’ve gotten really serious about dealing with my own sin.”
He says his frustration was compounded because he was not experiencing the joy, peace and freedom that the New Testament says belongs to believers —and neither were many of his minister friends.
I kept listening to preachers talk about truth—and the truth setting you free—but I knew they weren’t free. I heard coarse jestings, filthy talk and jokes that would embarrass a sailor come out of preachers’ mouths. I would call Dudley Hall, my closest friend, at 3 a.m. and ask him, ‘Dudley, can you be free? Do you know anybody who’s free?'”
It was Hall who finally pointed Robison in the direction of Milton Green—a layman who changed the course of Robison’s life.
“We were all at a convention and Dudley came in,” recalls Robison. “He had been preaching in Alabama When the power of God came down and a layman named Milton Green came to speak to the preachers. When Dudley walked onto the platform that afternoon and sat down next to me, he said, ‘I’m free.’ I looked at him and knew he had told me the truth. When he walked to the pulpit to speak, he glowed with the glory and grace of Jesus.
“He began praying for the sick and trusting God to heal. But one night I called him to give him a piece of my mind and my Baptist mentality. I set him straight and then I started in on everybody else. But Dudley stopped me and said ‘You make me sick. I’m so tired of hearing your mouth. You call Milton Green tonight or don’t ever call me again, because you’re not serious with God.'”
Robison did call Green that night and invited him to fly with him to a crusade the next day. Green accepted and on the trip down began to share from the Word. “He shared it with undeniable power and authority—and God confirmed it,” remembers Robison.
That night after the meeting, Robison invited Green back to his hotel room to share further. But after they had talked a while, Green looked over at him and began to cry. He said, “I’ve been listening to you and praying for you for six years. I feel so sorry for you. I’ve cast demons out of prisoners, convicts, murderers, witches, drug addicts and Hell’s Angels, but I believe you’re the most demonized person I’ve ever seen. You’re so tormented I don’t know how you’ve kept your sanity.”
Robison said, “I knew I was talking to someone who knew me. Pride wanted me to tell him to get out of my room. To scream at him, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’
“But I knew who I was and I did need help. I had a claw in my brain.”
Green asked if he could pray for him and when Robison agreed, he put his hands on Robison’s shoulders and began to pray Scriptures. Then, he began to walk around the room and rebuke Satan loudly and with great authority. “I’d never heard anybody do that,” Robison said. “All I could think of was, ‘I hope these walls are thick. I hope nobody hears about this.’ Then, all of a sudden, he just stopped. He looked over at me and said `How do you feel?’
“I said, ‘Fine.’ He said, ‘Do you feel like anything’s left?’ I said I hadn’t felt anything. I wished I had. But I was talking to a man who lives by faith, not by sight. He leaned over and said ‘It’ s all over, son.’ He waved his hand over my eyes and said, ‘The scales are coming off.’ He touched my head and said, ‘All traffic in your head is going to stop. All that noise is going to be silent.’ And I thought, ‘Huh!’
“But two days later, back at home, I woke up and Scriptures that I had never memorized were just flowing out of my mouth and tears were streaming down my face. I grabbed my wife and cried, ‘Betty, it’s gone.’ What’s gone?’ she asked. ‘The claw in my brain,’ I said. ‘I’ve been set free.’ And since that day, the Word of God has come alive to me.”
The difference in Robison is startling to those who knew him well before. Members of his staff say it is like working for a new person and they are delighted with the new man.
Despite rumors, he has not left, nor been run out of the Southern Baptist church. But neither has he let the new light he has received be hidden under a bushel. Although he does not speak in tongues, a traditional Pentecostal litmus test for being “Spirit-filled,” charismatics and Pentecostals show signs of wanting to claim the new Robison as one of their own.
He is intent, however, on dodging such labels. He says he fords as much traditionalism and ritualism in Pentecostal circles as in Baptist ones. He sees his ministry as one of preaching liberation and reconciliation to all the squabbling members of Christ’s body. He seeks a return of the day when the followers of Jesus were known simply by the love they demonstrated one for another.
In a three-page letter he sent to all Southern Baptist leaders, he expressed fear that divisiveness has reached dangerous proportions among Southern Baptists. He apologized for his part in aiding the current power struggle between liberal and conservative factions in the church.
“Although pure in motive,” reads one portion of his letter, which was obtained by the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram newspaper and reprinted, “during my 21 years in ministry I was on occasion un-Christlike in method and approach. That which I believed to be God-given conviction often came across as unkind, poorly thought-out, abrasive, too general, casting many unnecessarily into the same pot and possibly damaging the very body of Jesus.”
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