The Secret Place of Derek Prince

Derek Prince was born on August 14, 1915 in Bangalore in British India to a military family whose postings and discipline formed a sober backdrop to his childhood. Sent to England for schooling, he studied at Eton and then at King's College, Cambridge, where he specialized in the classical Tripos and philosophy and won high academic distinctions. He was being groomed for a life of ideas and lecture halls. The war altered his path. Conscripted into the British Army, he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps and was posted to North Africa and the Middle East. There, in desert barracks, he began to read the Bible, at first as a philosopher testing a text and soon as a man tested by the Word. The Scriptures arrested him. He met Christ, yielded to the authority of the Word of God, and discovered prayer not as ritual but as fellowship that directs a life. He would later speak very simply about that turning. The Book he had set out to examine examined him, and he could not go back to a life of theory without obedience.

After the war he remained in the Middle East and settled for a season in Jerusalem, where his path crossed that of Lydia Christensen, a Danish missionary who cared for abandoned and at risk girls. They married in 1946 and formed a household that became a sanctuary. Out of that home flowed prayer meetings, worship, shared meals, and a steady stream of rescues and restorations. The city's turmoil during the final British Mandate years pressed them into deeper trust. When they were forced to leave, they carried the same spirit into new assignments, first in London and then in East Africa, where Derek taught the Scriptures and helped equip local believers for leadership. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he and Lydia adopted daughters from several nations, and the kitchen table became a school of prayer as real as any classroom. He learned to seek God for daily bread, for visas, for protection, for the love needed to knit a very mixed family into one.

A widening itinerant ministry followed. Derek taught pastors and students on the authority of Scripture, the working of the Holy Spirit, and the meaning of covenant, faith, and prayer. He moved to the United States during the 1960s and soon his voice began to travel farther through radio. His teaching was not theatrical. It was clear, carefully reasoned, and born of hours in the secret place. He called believers to make the Bible their final court of appeal, to live under its promises and its commands, and to pray with confidence when the will of God in Scripture is plain. He fasted regularly and urged the church to recover fasting not as a stunt but as a grace that quiets the flesh and sharpens obedience. The burden that took shape in those years would characterize him for the rest of his life. Prayer and fasting under the authority of the Word can shape the course of families and churches and even of nations, because God has chosen to work through the intercession of His people.

In the 1970s his books began to circle the globe. He wrote on prayer and fasting, on blessing and curse, on the cross, on faith, and on the believer's authority, always insisting that motive matters and that love must govern the exercise of every gift. He also taught on deliverance and spiritual conflict with a frankness shaped by pastoral experience and by careful attention to the New Testament. He never treated such themes as spectacle. He treated them as pastoral responsibilities to be handled with Scripture, humility, and prayer. During those same years he briefly lent his reputation to a group of teachers who advocated shepherding and submission. When he saw excesses, he withdrew with a clear public statement and returned his full attention to teaching the Word and to the work of intercession.

From the 1980s into the new century he traveled widely, taught in packed halls and small churches, and encouraged prayer movements with Scripture rich messages. He gave special attention to prayer for Israel and for the peace of Jerusalem while honoring the unity of Jew and Gentile in Christ. His daily radio broadcast carried systematic Bible teaching into many languages. He kept his family circle close even as his public work enlarged. After Lydia's death he married Ruth Baker, a friend to his extended family and a partner in intercession. In the final years he divided time between the United States and Jerusalem. On September 24, 2003, he went to be with the Lord in Jerusalem, ending a pilgrimage in the city where his married life and much of his prayer life had first taken deep root.