The Secret Place of Morris Cerullo

Morris Cerullo was born on October 2, 1931 in Passaic, New Jersey, the youngest of five children in a Jewish family. When both parents died while he was still a boy, he was placed in a strict Orthodox Jewish orphanage in New Jersey. The Lord met him there. He discovered a Gideon Bible and read it in secret, and through the quiet witness of Christians who showed him kindness he came to confess Jesus as Messiah and Lord at the age of fourteen. The conversion cut across every expectation for his future, yet it gave him a single passion that ordered the rest of his life. He soon felt the weight of a call to preach Christ to the nations and to train others to do the same. By his later teens he was already traveling to churches, learning to rely on the presence of God more than on natural confidence or advantage.

As a young man he married Theresa, who became his constant companion in prayer and ministry. The two of them lived with a sense of divine assignment rather than personal career. He began with small meetings and simple preaching, but his burden grew as doors opened across North America and then beyond. He learned early that the call to evangelize nations cannot be sustained by platform skill alone. It must be carried in a life of prayer. When he crossed oceans for the first time and stood before crowds in Africa and Asia, he carried the same habits he had learned as a teenager who had met God over the pages of a worn Bible. He would kneel in hotel rooms and village houses, often long before dawn, weeping for people he had not yet met, asking the Lord to reveal Jesus in saving and healing power.

In 1962 he established World Evangelism, later known as Morris Cerullo World Evangelism, to serve a vision that was larger than any single campaign. The aim was not only to preach but to equip. From the early years he convened Schools of Ministry in which thousands of pastors and evangelists were taught to win souls, pray for the sick, and build up local churches. The pattern was consistent. Morning hours were given to teaching from Scripture. Midday hours were given to private prayer and waiting on the Lord. Evening hours were given to the public proclamation of the gospel with room for Christ to confirm His Word. He refused to fashion a personality cult. He pressed the message that nations would be reached most effectively by national workers who live holy lives and minister in the authority of Scripture and the presence of the Spirit.

The crusades became a procession of open fields and stadiums across Africa, India, the Philippines, and Latin America. Reports from those years describe vast gatherings, simple sermons on the cross and the resurrection, corporate prayer for the sick, and local pastors receiving new strength to shepherd their people. He did not invent the need for spectacle. He sought the Lord for a visitation that would honor Jesus and strengthen the church. He was a frequent guest on Christian radio and television and later launched his own broadcasts so that the preaching could keep pace with the hunger of distant audiences who could not attend the open air meetings.

In later life he established a physical witness in San Diego that joined proclamation with remembrance and training. The Legacy International Center was conceived as a place where the story of the gospel and the call to the nations could be told to new generations through Scripture, exhibits, conferences, and prayer. Even as his body weakened he continued to gather workers, preach Christ, and lay hands on pastors with tears and faith. He entered the presence of the Lord on July 10, 2020, closing a ministry journey that had begun when a teenage boy in an orphanage opened a Bible and heard the voice of God.