Our Story

Being a man who feared God, he began to inquire of the Lord for direction, and especially for the name he would give to that radio program, which was soon to begin at six in the morning. After several weeks of prayer and supplication, he had a very beautiful experience with the Lord. While he was praying, he had a vision of a most beautiful sunrise. At that moment, he did not pay much attention to it and kept praying insistently for an answer. After a while, the Lord asked him, “In your opinion, what is the most pressing spiritual need that New York lacks?” He answered quickly, “Hope. That is what this city needs, and the many lost souls in it.” He continued praying, and after a long time, seeing that the Lord did not speak to him again, he felt frustrated, and in deep agony and with a great cry he said, “Lord! Lord! Please tell me the name of the program.” At that moment, he heard the voice of God say to him again, “I already gave it to you,” and he, still groaning, said, “But when? I haven’t heard anything!” “Yes,” the Lord answered him, “I already told you.” But he remained confused, trying to find the moment when God had given him the name.

After a while of questioning like this, the Lord asked him, “What did you see at the beginning of your prayer?” “A sunrise,” he answered, without giving it much importance. The Lord asked again, “What was your answer to the question I asked you about New York?” He answered, “Hope.” The Lord said to him, “There you have it.” “But… What? How? You haven’t told me anything! I don’t understand anything!” he replied in desperation. But the Lord only said to him, “I already told you.” Then, trying to regain his composure, he searched the vision and his answer for the hidden message that held the answer he so longed for, repeating several times, “Sunrise, hope… sunrise, hope… sunrise, hope…” Until suddenly his understanding was enlightened and he said, “Ahh! The Sunrise of Hope! That is the name!” With the name and God’s blessing, he launched his program, “El Amanecer de la Esperanza” (The Sunrise of Hope).

After a few years of that radio program, Pastor Radhamés had an experience with the Holy Spirit, which led him to worship God in the Spirit, in a way totally different from how they did it in the denomination where he pastored. At that time, he had also established a Bible institute, and there, to the leaders who were taking the courses, he taught messages about grace and life in the Spirit. Naturally, that situation created certain problems with the organization. They said that his worship seemed more like that of a Pentecostal than that of a minister of their denomination. For that reason, the Lord told him that he had to leave that organization, and gave him a sign of something that was going to happen, and it happened six months later. He prophesied it, telling them that within a certain time the organization would make a decision concerning him, and that would be the sign of his departure, but his colleagues did not believe him.

That organization, even though it did not agree with his way of worshiping and his emphasis on grace and on life in the Spirit, did not want Pastor Radhamés to leave because of the esteem they had for him. They even made him several offers to get him to stay, but on the condition that he give up his convictions about the Spirit and about grace. But since it is impossible for a man of God to go against his conscience, after what he had experienced in intimacy with the Lord, and because of that conviction and the instruction he had received from the Lord, at the end of 1985 he left the organization.

So it was that the home in the Bronx, in March 1986, became the birthplace of a legacy that would bring hope not only to a world that is being lost, but to those lives that wander like sheep without a shepherd, hungry and thirsty, longing for the pastures of God. They stayed in that house until a Baptist pastor rented them a few hours on Sundays in his building. They remained in that place for almost two years, until they found a small space in which to gather. While they were there, the Lord said to them, “You are not going to leave this place, even though it is small and cramped, until I deal with you and instruct you in my purpose.”

During those two years, Pastor Radhamés wept before the Lord because, although he had gone through seminary and had pastoral experience, the revelation God had given him kept him from reproducing any of the structures of the existing denominations in the Body of Christ. It would have been easy to decide on a particular system, but he wanted to obey God, so, weeping, he pleaded with God, like Solomon: “Lord, You brought me out of there, where there was a church manual that guided me, where everything was already done. Now I am going out, and I have to lead a people; but I want to do Your will and I don’t know how. I want to follow Your direction, my God.” Until one day God spoke to him and confronted him, saying, “Do you really want me to guide you?” “Yes, Lord,” he answered, weeping like a child, “of course I want You to guide me!” Then God said to him, “Are you willing to pay the price for me to guide you?” and without hesitating he said, “Yes, Lord, I am willing,” but he did not know what he was consenting to.

Having done so, the process of formation at the hand of God began. The first thing God asked him was, “Are you willing to renounce your theology? Because there are things you believe that are not true, and there are things you reject that are true. Are you willing to stop believing what you believe, in order to follow what I show you to be true?” And Pastor Radhamés, weeping, kept consenting: “Yes, Lord, I want to. I am Your servant.” Then the Lord began to deal with his life. The first thing He revealed to him was the truth of His Kingdom. God said to him, “Ever since you were converted, you have depended a great deal on books, and you delight in reading them, so the first thing I am going to forbid you is to read.” That was tremendous for him, since he was an avid reader, to the point that in his budget he had an amount set aside for buying books, not just to read them, but simply to have a nice illustration for some sermon, no matter what it cost. So God told him that he would read only the Bible, not because it was forbidden to read a book, but because on a personal level books had had a great influence on his life. The Lord said to him, “Everyone who writes has an argument and defends it, but not all the arguments defended correspond to the truth. So for me to teach you, it is necessary that you not be under the influence of any books.” That was the reason for that radical instruction.

After a time, God said to him again, “Are you ready to begin?” “Yes, I am ready now,” he answered. Then God instructed him to take his Bible and look up Matthew 6:9-13, the Lord’s Prayer. Pastor Radhamés read it, and then the Lord said to him, “Tell me what a kingdom is.” He, with his university education and his passion for history, proceeded to define in his own words what a kingdom is, but God stopped him and said, “No, no, no; look up the word kingdom in a dictionary,” without even letting him finish defining it. So, embarrassed and somewhat deflated, he tried to search through the boxes where he had stored his library, since he was in the middle of a move, and the only thing he could find at hand at the moment was a pocket dictionary. The first thing he thought was that the word kingdom would not appear there, but to his surprise he found it. The definition was very brief and concise, as if it had been chosen by God: “Kingdom, territory governed by a king.”

After he had read the definition to the Lord, He said to him, “Very good, you know what an empire is; now tell me what the ancient kingdoms were like.” He answered, “Monarchical, absolutist…” “Correct, very good answer,” God said to him. “That is just what my Kingdom is: monarchical and absolutist. That is why I revealed myself in ancient times, because if I did so today, in a time of democratic culture, they would never have understood me. But I revealed myself in that time because people understood what a king, a sovereign, a monarch or an emperor is. Now, apply that definition to my Kingdom. In my Kingdom, who is the king?” He answered quickly, “You are the King.” “And the territory?” “Well, Your territory is the heavens, the earth and everything that exists, visible and invisible.” “You have answered very well. In an ancient kingdom there was no law other than the will of the king. Let us go back to the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus says: Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. In order for the Kingdom to come to earth, Jesus came to establish my Kingdom. First, to save you, so that you may enter into my Kingdom.”

Salvation is a provision of God so that man may enter His Kingdom, because man, due to the fall into sin, lost the Kingdom of God. That is, God no longer governed in man; Satan, the self and the world did. And now Christ, when He saves us, places us under the Kingdom of God. So the Lord spoke to him about the purpose of salvation, which, besides reconciling us with Him, was for Him to reign in us and for us to reign with Him. God also showed him that the Lord’s Prayer has an order of priority in the mind of God. When Jesus said Hallowed be Your name, it implied that there can be no Kingdom if God’s name is not hallowed. Israel, for example, did not hallow God’s name. Now Jesus teaches us that the most important thing in our relationship with God is to hallow His name, and after receiving His Kingdom, to do His will. After so many messages about the Lord’s Prayer, he now saw it through God’s lens, in the true context of Jesus’ intention when He taught it.

In this way, God began to teach him that He governs just as He is. The monarchs of the earth, being men, change their way of governing according to circumstances. But God does not change; with Him there is no shadow of turning, and His Kingdom is always eternally stable. God does not need to change because He is perfect; His kingdom is just because He is just; His kingdom is holy because He is holy; His kingdom is kind because He is kind. Therefore, to speak of the Kingdom and to speak of God is to speak of the same thing, because just as God is, so He governs. God never governs apart from His Kingdom. Kingdom is the same as God. The Kingdom of God manifests God’s way of being and thinking. His Kingdom is intimately related to His will, as substance is to form, because He governs according to His will. That is why Jesus taught us to pray, saying, “Your kingdom come, and Your will be done here, as it is done in heaven.” There is no kingdom on earth, nor in our life, nor in our home, if God’s will is not done.

From there came the teaching that God be everything. It was born out of Radhamés’s search to find a way to be effective in everything, and he wept before the Lord because he wanted to measure up in every area. In worship, in prayer, in preaching, in stewardship, in the proclamation of the gospel, in all the functions of the church, he wanted to be excellent, but he fell short, so he grew frustrated and wept, and persistently prayed to the Lord, asking Him to sum up His will for him, that is, to tell him one thing which, by doing it, he would be doing everything.

One day, God taught him how, by doing only one thing, he would please Him in all the rest. God led him to 1 Corinthians 15, to the text where Paul says: “Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, THAT GOD MAY BE ALL IN ALL” (1 Cor 15:28). God illuminated his understanding and made him see that if God is everything to him, he has already done everything with that one thing. The Lord showed him that in His Kingdom, He is everything. That began to change his way of worshiping, because in the denomination there is a tendency to imitate what is seen, and the emphasis in the service was on people. Classes were given on how to make the church grow, with spaciousness, parking, a class for the children, community service, good heating, cleanliness, and so on; in short, so that people would feel comfortable, and so that the services would not be long, lest people get tired.

The revelation of God as everything showed him that there had been a misplaced focus regarding the priority in serving God. The service is not for people to feel good, but for God to feel good. The purpose of worship is not for us to feel good; it is for God to feel good. Even the greeting was taken as part of the worship service, so that people would feel good, but a pastor or even the President of the United States may be in the midst of the congregation, and we do not interrupt the worship of God to give a greeting to a distinguished person. We greet those who come for the first time, but not as before, when everything was done so that people would feel good. Now we focus everything in the service on God feeling good, because we understood that an offering is a gift of tribute to God. So we focus everything on God being pleased in the service. What God demands of worship is not to give Him a mutilated, damaged animal, but to give Him the best. We have always started our services on time, but how long the service lasts depends on the Holy Spirit, using, naturally, the prudence not to prolong it simply because we want to prolong it, but giving room for the leading of the Spirit. So we place the offering and we worship until the offering is consumed. Not as a religious program, but a service in the Spirit of worship to our God. From this came the theme and concept of the book “So That God May Be All in All”; so that God may be everything in worship, everything in preaching, everything in stewardship, everything in administration, everything in service and in every area.

Life in the Spirit was the first experience Pastor Radhamés had with the Lord, and it led him to leave the denomination where he was. The first book, “Manual de la Vida en el Espíritu” (Manual of Life in the Spirit), also originated from that experience. However, as for the vision, life in the Spirit has to do with the personal, with focusing everything through the life of the Spirit. God revealed to him the difference between an organization and an organism, and he was able to understand that both the place where he was and all the denominations begin with a beautiful spiritual ideal, but as they grow they gradually deviate and drift, and in the end the prevailing interest is to sustain the “system” and to worship the organization, thus losing the purpose and the spiritual vision that God had revealed to them.

God also changed his way of preaching. And although he taught homiletics (the art of preaching), when he entered into life in the Spirit (without despising the principles of homiletics, which help us while we are being trained), God began to form him in preaching in a different way from how he had been trained. Now, although he never thinks of doing it this way, he sets forth a teaching which he draws from the study of the Bible, and at the end he applies it, and he sees how people take the application to heart forever. From that moment, God began to bring Pastor Radhamés into the world of revelation. Whereas before he had learned to prepare sermons, to go to the Bible to look for a topic, or to find in a good book the idea for a good sermon, now he reads the Bible to fill his heart, with a notebook beside him to write down what the Lord reveals to him, and many times he feels that the Holy Spirit dictates God’s thoughts to him. Thus, when the time comes to preach, he only inquires in prayer what the Lord’s will is, and the Spirit guides him to that revelation which at one time He revealed to him. He consults reference books, naturally, but only to look for information that confirms or clarifies the teaching already revealed. But the topic is given to him by God through the Word.

One of the things God taught him is that there is no messenger without a message. If God sends a prophet, He sends him with a message. That is why the prophets of the Old Testament, although they had different messages, depending on what God was communicating through them, it was God who gave them the message; they did not prepare or compose messages. And when God calls you, He gives you a message, and in that sense we understand that we are a prophetic ministry, because God taught us that a prophet is not so much one who predicts the future, but one who has a message from God for the church. And we believe that El Amanecer de la Esperanza is a prophetic ministry, not so much because Pastor Radhamés has a prophetic ministry and the prophetic anointing, but because God gave us a message for the church and for the nations.

El Amanecer de la Esperanza is a prophetic, apostolic ministry, because it has been sent to carry a message from God to the church. What is the message? The message of the life of the Kingdom of God. The life of the Kingdom of God consists in this: in everything we do and preach, we lead people to God, because the true prophet is not so much the one who announces the future and it comes to pass, but the one who leads people to God. John the Baptist, as far as we know, never performed a miracle, at least none recorded in the Bible, but he led people to Christ; his message was: “Behold the Lamb of God!” and of him Jesus said that he was more than a prophet, and that among those born of women there has not risen one greater than he (Matt 11:11). Many prophets of ancient times did not perform miracles, but they led people to God. Moses even said: “If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods’—which you have not known—‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the LORD your God is testing you to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deut 13:1-3). This means, then, that there are prophets who announce things and they come to pass, but they turn people away from God.

Therefore, our emphasis in everything we do is to bring people to God. In our books the emphasis is God, that He be the All in all things. In preaching, in the motivation of our works, in anything, if God is not the All, the message is not right, because God must be the All in all things. Not only in the content of the message or its emphasis, but in the motivation of the preacher. A message can speak much of Christ and not be Christ-centered; it can speak much of God and not have God as its center. That being so, God then focuses us and teaches us what the life of His Kingdom is: that He is the All in all and in everyone.

That is why our only objective is obedience, submission, and pleasing the Lord. It is the reason we focus on the fear of God, on serving Him in what is authentic, on the oneness of: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Deut 6:4-5); on teaching the truth just as it was taught, holding fast to everything the Holy Word says. Likewise, on not being carried away by philosophical currents, or by our own way of thinking. In the gospel, God is the All in Christ, and that was the message of the apostles when they preached; they spoke against the human mind, against culture, tradition and philosophy. All those things in reality oppose God. Human thought stands in opposition to what God is. When you look at our preaching, you can see that none of it was an idea of Pastor Radhamés, but a revelation. In fact, for years he himself did not even realize the road he was on, until he gradually came to see it.

The apostolic aspect of our ministry is the way the Lord has guided us, as a local church, whose dealing is in reality His purpose for all the rest of the Body of Christ. In other words, we realized that God was sending us to our brothers and sisters. As the Master said, “Freely you have received, freely give” (Matt 10:8 NKJV). For example, the Lord has taught us something about the church. The church, seen from God’s point of view, is the body of Christ. God taught Pastor Radhamés that revelation even while he was in the denomination, which is why he had problems there, because they consider themselves exclusive to God. But in his preaching, he already declared that God has a church in every nation, tribe, tongue and people, even in every denomination. They and many other denominations teach that Christ is reached through that church, and they proclaim themselves the true church, the door to Christ and to heaven. But the church has never been the door to heaven, because heaven already has a door, and it is Christ. Jesus Christ is the door to heaven, and when we enter through Him to God, we enter the church, to be kept until the day of His coming.

God taught us that the way to identify Christians is by the new birth. Every person who is genuinely born of God (by their fruits we know them) is a child of God, and therefore part of the body of Christ, no matter where they were converted or in which church they worship God. The name of the denomination has nothing to do with heaven, and much less with salvation. The church is made up of all the saints of all the denominations, the authentic Christians, who have been born again and serve God with sincerity of heart. So the concept of the church changes. From then on, God began to show us that we were servants of God to serve the church.

God’s calling is to serve Him and then to serve the church. We serve God first, and by serving God, we serve the church. As an apostolic-prophetic ministry, He sends us to our brothers and sisters with one focus: to build up the body of Christ in the world, no matter who they are. For example, we have been on the radio from 1983 to the present, and recently we are venturing into local television, since for decades our sermons have been broadcast on television networks in Latin America. To fulfill that purpose in our local area (New York) we spend thousands and thousands of dollars every month on the radio, yet we do not even give out a telephone number for people to call, because our emphasis is to build up the church, not to seek followers.

On one occasion, we rented the early morning hours, from 2 to 6 a.m., Monday through Friday, on a secular radio station, which came to US$260,000.00 a year. At that time we opened the telephone lines so that people could call with prayer needs, but we never said where the church was. In fact, we still do not say. Our building has no sign identifying the name of the ministry, or the pastor, or the schedule of services, etc., as is customary, and anyone who sees the building would not believe it houses a church. Why do we do this? Not because it is wrong for a church to have a sign identifying itself and showing its schedule of services, by no means, but because God, since we are a prophetic house, said to us: “Do not put a sign outside, because you represent a church that unites the rest of the body, and names divide.” Of course, as a religious entity, we are recognized in the United States, and we need to register a name for legal purposes. But we do not emphasize the name El Amanecer de la Esperanza, because God is the All in all things.

In other words, as a kind of prophetic sign, God told us not to put up signs outside identifying us as a church, so that He could show three things: 1. That we belong to the body of Christ, and we do not have a name that separates us from the rest of the body; 2. That it is He who adds to the church those who are to be saved. That is, our part is to preach so that people come to God, and He brings those He wants to add to this congregation; 3. Only the people God wants to come will come here. In fact, it is a very long story, but brothers and sisters who have gone out looking for our building have not found it, and there are others to whom God has revealed it, and they have seen the church and the pastor in dreams, without knowing him, and when they arrive they marvel to see that God brought them. That is something so amazing, and we see so much wisdom in it, since in every local church there should be the people whom God wants to be in that place, according to the purpose.

God also taught us that the church is sustained by tithes and offerings. “Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house, and try Me now in this,” says the LORD of hosts, “If I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it” (Malachi 3:10). Translated into the language of the New Testament, the house is the church; the food is the building up of the church, everything that contributes to the purpose that builds up the body of Christ. He made us understand that tithes are not like taxes or a contribution to the government; and although tithes contribute to the purpose, they are not a contribution, but an act of worship.

The purpose of the tithe is to acknowledge God as the Lord, the owner, the provider and the benefactor of our lives. Since Genesis, God set apart the portion of His house, the tithes, to carry out His purpose. Since our purpose is not only local, but extends to the whole body, we manage the budget with the rest of the body in mind. As for the principles of the tithe, God forbade us to take up collections. In our stewardship, we do not sell, nor do we collect extra offerings, but the church is sustained by the tithes and offerings that the brothers and sisters give voluntarily. From then until today, we have also not collected missionary offerings, or offerings for the poor, or an offering for the preacher, much less for the pastor, or for any other cause. From what the brothers and sisters give, we supply all the needs.

In that sense, we give everything away. God taught us the blessedness of giving, of giving everything away. That being so, we have given away hundreds of thousands of DVDs and CDs with the sermons. At times we have given away more than fifty thousand compact discs in a year. Of the three books we have written, we have given away more than sixty thousand copies. When we travel to the nations, we do not ask for offerings; we pay for our own fares, we pay for the hotel and the food, and we take offerings to the nations. This is very important, because the Lord taught us that apostles carry, they do not bring back, because the word apostle originated from the ships that left the ports of the Mediterranean to carry fruits, to carry merchandise. That is to say, they were sent to carry. Paul carried, but he did not bring back. Conquerors, when they go out to the nations, return with booty and loaded with spoils, but we, the apostles of Jesus Christ, go out full of resources of grace and return empty, because we went to distribute, not to plunder.

Likewise, for us the building up of the rest of the body is as important as the building up of our own church at the local level, because we are one body. In fact, we invest more in the nations, in the churches with which we are in relationship, than in our own house. Nevertheless, what is significant about all this is that we have relationships with churches from Argentina to Spain, and our only interest is to build up the body of Christ.

We have understood that being in fatherhood and in authority means being in responsibility. The Word says: “… the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children” (2 Cor 12:14). The gospel consists of giving, not receiving; this is what we have learned from God. Many pastors and churches see us as spiritual fathers and as their spiritual authority. But one of the most significant things God has taught us is to guard the heart. That is why, when we enter into a relationship with a pastor or a church, we say to that pastor: “The only thing we ask of you is that you please God and let yourself be led by the Holy Spirit in your church. We do not offer covering, but relationship and service.

Today, apostleship has come to be interpreted as something sold as a covering, but it is nothing more than religious colonialism. This is a very old practice in the denominations: annexing local churches to form a religious empire, and in the end taking their resources, their tithes and offerings, and anything else. But apostolic work should be to provide fatherhood and service selflessly, giving everything without receiving anything in return. The same as God does in Christ: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son…” (John 3:16).

When the motivation of the heart is to receive and not to give, we are far removed from the heart of God. That is why we do not go out to seek, but to impart. Starting from this principle, the very same thing God asks of us is what we ask of the churches, as a condition: that they respect God, that they love Him, that they please Him, and that they govern their local church with a government of elders, in the fear of God and being guided by the Holy Spirit. In fact, there are pastors who want to give the name of our church to their congregations, because they consider themselves children of the house, but Pastor Radhamés always opposes it. He tells them no, because we do not even have a name on our door, nor do we seek to make a name, although we do lift up a name: the Name of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, the only One who is worthy.

God has taught us that He is the All. Therefore, we do not worship man, or the church, or institutions, or the ministry, or anything of ours. That explains why our books do not have a photo of Pastor Radhamés (as the author on the back cover), and he refuses to place his photo on this website in order to make himself known. God did not send us as servants to talk about ourselves, to promote ourselves, but to carry His name and make it known. Someone said, referring to the preaching of the gospel, that every message that is not purely and essentially biblical constitutes a prostitution of the pulpit. Therefore, we consider that everything that robs attention from Christ and His name is an assault against His purpose and His government in the lives of His chosen ones.

When the Jewish leaders judged Jesus, trying to persuade Pilate to condemn Him, they said to him: “If you let this Man go, you are not Caesar’s friend. Whoever makes himself a king speaks against Caesar” (John 19:12), as if to say that whoever declares himself king is plotting against the Emperor. In the same way we say, paraphrasing this verse: Every minister who declares himself lord or king, and who promotes and emphasizes himself, is plotting against the reign and lordship of Christ. Sadly, today it is very common to project the image of man. If we surf the Internet we drown, because every page where we stop is a cult of personality, of the preacher. Their pages are full of photos showing so-and-so with his family, projecting all his achievements. Someone records a music CD, and the first thing that appears on the cover is the image of the person. And what we are saying is that there is a fever, a need, a thirst for rampant idolatry and self-worship. And this is directly an assault against the government and purpose of God, and the lordship of Christ.

So the revelation we have received of the life of the Kingdom, in summary, is that God is the All in all things. That truth has led us to emphasize everything from God’s lens and perspective. God’s eyes are His very heart. God looks through His heart, and whoever has the heart of God has God’s perspective.

If someone were to ask us, how would you sum up your vision as a local church? We would do it in three words: please God. This did not come as mere inspiration, but through a hard dealing of God in that small, cramped place, for eight years, from 1986 to 1994. God called those eight years the wilderness, using the typology of Israel’s experience in their exodus from Egypt to Canaan.

The denomination where Pastor Radhamés used to congregate, the Lord called, spiritually, “Egypt,” and his departure an “exodus.” In the middle of those years, in 1990, we bought the building where we now worship. This purchase was a miracle, because God told us that He was going to give us that building, but it is a long story that we need not tell now. Pastor Radhamés prayed for the acquisition of the property, and after a time we were indeed able to acquire it, but that building had to be rebuilt. So we rebuilt that building over four years, from 1990 to 1994, which we could have done in one year, but God deliberately complicated things, because He had much to teach us about service and about His plan for us.

The Lord said to us: “You will not enter, you will not cross the ‘Jordan’ (that is what He called the occupation of the building once it was prepared) until you are ready.” He dealt firmly with us. The experience was hard and difficult; we were tested so that we might later be approved. And we rebuilt that building with our own hands: children, women and brothers who knew construction. Although we logically used an architect, and licensed contractors for the electrical and plumbing work, the rest we did ourselves. And a job that could have been done in a year dragged on, because everything got complicated. Later we saw that God did it that way on purpose.

In the process of those years, God taught Pastor Radhamés how the church should be organized, but with the caveat that the church was not an organization, but a living organism. He showed him the difference between an organization and a living organism. First, He made him take into account that the church is the body of Christ. Most churches are organized following the systems of businesses and human organizations. For example, in many settings the ministries are called ladies’ societies, men’s societies, youth societies, and the areas of service are divided by sex and age. In other places, they are even called departments. But these names are nothing more than the way business organizations are composed, an imitation of how an organization functions.

But God showed us from the Bible that the church must function as a body. The Lord, by His Holy Spirit, imparted the five ministries, the nine gifts of the Spirit, and what the Bible calls the functions that appear in Romans 12 and other places. God had Pastor Radhamés write down each ministry, the gifts of the Spirit, the functions and operations, with their definitions according to the Bible, as a description for service in ministry. As Peter says, each one should serve according to the gift he has received (1 Peter 4:10). The same happens with talents in the natural realm: when someone finishes high school and enters the university, for some careers an academic aptitude test is required in order to place the student in the area of his suitability. Some people are good at mathematics, others at the humanities, others at the sciences, and it is advisable for each person to pursue studies in the area where he shows his abilities or best performance. It is the same spiritually: each one must serve in the body, not in what he would like, but in what he should. If anyone aspires to the office of bishop, he desires a good work, but it is not what you aspire to, but what the Holy Spirit imparted to you.

This is how we function in the church. We have a government of elders and ministry leaders. The Lord showed Pastor Radhamés that the ministries were formed by needs, and the needs were met by the gifts. When brothers and sisters are baptized, they are guided to serve in the area where they feel called by God. For example, the Bible speaks of the ministry of helps and the ministry of service; we put those two ministries together, and the brothers and sisters who have those gifts of serving and helping serve in that ministry. We have a ministry on behalf of the sick and the elderly; who serves there? People who have the gift of healing and who feel a burden for the elderly and the sick. There is a worship or Altar ministry, a Diaconate ministry, an Evangelism ministry, a Youth ministry, a Rehabilitation ministry, a Communications ministry, a Transportation ministry, among others. Each one must work in the area where God called him, where he feels called, where he has a burden and the ability.

This means, then, that our church functions through a government of elders, and more than sixteen ministries. Each ministry has its leader. Any brother or sister who is baptized may take part as a volunteer in most of the ministries, if they feel called to those ministries. It is a very difficult part for the pastor, to channel the spiritual life of a person; this is not achieved in a day, since there are people who are very clear about their gifts, just as there are others who are undefined about them; it is a process. But at least, in the church, the one who is baptized does not need an appointment to serve; he simply serves, just as in the human body neither the heart nor the kidneys, nor the liver, nor the pancreas, nor the feet, nor the eyes require an appointment to function; they simply serve.

Something important we should point out is that we are not a democratic church, but a theocratic church, because God has never been democratic. The only time in the Bible that God is mentioned as having been democratic was when He wanted to confuse Ahab, and gathered the spirits and said to them: “Who will persuade Ahab king of Israel to go up, that he may fall at Ramoth Gilead?” (2 Chr 18:19), and a spirit came forward and said: “I will persuade him. The LORD said to him, ‘In what way?’ So he said, ‘I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ And the LORD said, ‘You shall persuade him and also prevail; go out and do so’” (2 Chr 18:20-21). So the only time God consulted was to confuse a shameless man who turned away from Him. But God never consults; God is the one who is consulted.

We see that in most churches there are elections every so often to choose the leaders, who are replaced every so often. However, the Bible teaches us that callings are irrevocable: “For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Rom 11:29). The apostles were not chosen for a year, nor were the deacons; they were designated, set apart and ordained to serve forever. Therefore, in our church there are no appointments; people serve in the ministries. When someone is designated by the Holy Spirit to be the leader of a ministry, he goes through a process of testing and training, and then serves, as it says in the book of Acts of the Apostles: “Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (Acts 13:2). Ministry leaders are set apart, and they have an elder who serves as their counselor (he does not direct the ministry), and who is the voice of that ministry in the government, or presbytery, of the church. Order and submission are very important elements in this organizational structure established by the Lord, to which all of us, without exception, submit. In this way we function as a body, and to this day we have seen the wisdom, harmony and perfection in this way of organizing.

God had said to Pastor Radhamés: “Do not choose any leader in the church. Just place some people to serve, so that the church functions, nothing more, because I am the One who is going to choose here those who are going to serve; I am the Lord.” So, applying what He taught us, that He is the All, and that He is the One who governs His church, Pastor Radhamés did not dare to do anything outside that instruction. In fact, in the rebuilding of that building we spent years consulting God about how the walls were to be painted, the color of the curtains, the interior design, everything, every single thing, with much prayer and much dealing from God. When we disobeyed in something, God made His displeasure known and stopped the construction. That is why everything was so complicated. A book could be written about the experience of those four years. Everything got complicated, and if God’s will was not done, nothing prospered. That is how He taught us obedience and submission.

We should mention that when Pastor Radhamés left that denomination, a group of people left with him, not because he told them to leave the institution, but because they, due to his preaching, could no longer continue where they were, and they followed him, without his being able to do anything to prevent it. Along the way, people who had been formed in other churches were also added. For most of these brothers and sisters, God’s dealing with us was a crisis, because they could not absorb what God was saying. They came with their theological suitcase, with the background of their past, and wanted to apply that to the process that was taking place among us. That is how, later, after having been formed, some of them rebelled against what had been established, dividing the church and leaving the pastor’s heart broken by their ingratitude. Nevertheless, we were able to see that although God’s dealing with us was not successful with people who were already formed, it was a great blessing for those who had no experience or ecclesiastical formation or ministerial honor.

When Abraham went out to fight those kings who had attacked the people of Sodom and carried Lot off captive, the Scripture says that Abraham armed his servants, those born in his house, three hundred and eighteen, and with them he rescued Lot (Gen 14:14). Through this account, the Lord gave Pastor Radhamés a revelation about the meaning of “those born in his house.” God made him understand that the servants born in the house were servant-sons, and a servant-son does not rebel in the middle of the battlefield, because, like Eliezer of Damascus, they do not come already formed from other places, but were raised in the house and grew up in the house. Then God instructed him to conduct a discipleship that He would call “The Servants Born in the House,” in which He would point out who would be part of it. And just as He took Gideon to the water and gave him as a sign the way in which someone drank, “Everyone who laps from the water with his tongue, as a dog laps, you shall set apart by himself; likewise everyone who bows down on his knees to drink” (Judges 7:5 NKJV), God instructed him to observe the brothers and sisters while they served, and according to how they served, so they would be selected to be in that discipleship. During those four years, the pastor kept notes on the people who had aptitude, who were selfless, devoted, disinterested; those who, with some knowledge of construction, received the pastor’s instruction without questioning, even though they perhaps did not agree with his construction approach, showing a beautiful spirit of submission to authority.

Having done this, while the brothers and sisters worked voluntarily on the construction, God kept pointing out to him whom he should set apart, based on their aptitude for service (submission, obedience, selflessness, self-denial, and their unconditional manner in serving). When the pastor had all the names, the discipleship began, alongside the construction. The subjects in that discipleship were taught by the Spirit. The pastor taught them to preach and to search the Scriptures; he gave them the history of the Old Testament and the New; in short, he formed them as ministers. In those meetings there were great manifestations of the Spirit. Pastor Radhamés was amazed to see men and women with no preaching experience whatsoever, when the time came to expound the Word, in the practice sessions, the Presence would fall and we would throw ourselves on the floor to weep; this was almost always the case. It was a heaven.

From that discipleship, the Lord showed Pastor Radhamés who would be the elders of the church and the leaders of the ministries. God told him that the church of the New Testament was made up of elders, and He spoke to him about the functions of the elders, which are six: governing, teaching, anointing the sick, shepherding the flock, laying on of hands, and guarding doctrine. Those whom God pointed out were ordained, as the Word establishes. Although they were already being tested in the process of service, it was also necessary to test their character, in short, everything that God demands. This is how the government of our church is constituted, which makes up the Presbytery.

The Presbytery is the government of the elders in the church, which is a New Testament matter. It is the form of government established throughout the Bible. God began the model of the government of elders with Moses in the wilderness, when He chose the seventy elders to help Moses (Numbers 11). And later, in the New Testament, the Sanhedrin was composed of elders. And from that model, God governs the church. This is what Paul calls the Presbytery of the church (1 Timothy 4:14), the government of the elders.

Something very important: just as God is not democratic, the elders of the church (together with the pastor as the presiding elder) have never made a decision by a show of hands, nor any decision as the result of a vote or by information. We have understood, as a government, that we have to work in two areas, or questions: 1. This thing we are about to do, is it God’s will? And 2. If it is God’s will, is it the time to do it? Those are the two questions that govern us, because we are not in the government to deliberate, to decide, or to make decisions based on our own judgment, but to carry out the will of God. Since we are a prophetic house, we have a box where the brothers and sisters write prophecies, dreams and revelations, which we read and select according to their content, by discernment and in the fear of God. When we see that the Spirit is saying the same thing through several brothers and sisters, without their having agreed among themselves, we interpret that the Holy Spirit is telling us something. Then we take that revelation, bring it to the government of elders with those testimonies, and then we judge, according to biblical revelation, whether or not God is speaking regarding that matter. If God is speaking, we will have the answer to our two questions: Is it God’s will? Is it God’s time?

Our constitution is the Bible. The country where we live, the United States, requires that the church, being considered a nonprofit organization, be governed by a constitution. Our constitution (as a legal requirement) is written in accordance with our vision, which is what we are setting forth here. That is to say, all our decisions and the way we are ordered as a congregation are based on biblical revelation. Our constitution is nothing more than the biblical way of guiding ourselves; and the way it is drafted is in accordance with the vision that God has revealed to us, confirmed in the Holy Word, and by the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

As a church, we belong to the body of Christ. We refuse to classify ourselves, because by classifying ourselves we are already dividing ourselves, separating ourselves from the rest of the body, and that goes against the purpose that God has revealed to us as members of His church. We refuse to say that we are a charismatic or Pentecostal church, because when someone reads that, they say: “Oh, they are like that.” It is not that we pretend to be unique, but we refuse to be pigeonholed. We believe in the Holy Spirit because we left a denomination on account of the Holy Spirit, in order to be led by Him. The revelation and guidance of the Holy Spirit define us as a spiritual house. Most churches believe that the era of the Spirit ended with the apostolic age, and that the Holy Spirit is now simply the third person of the Trinity, whose only work is to convert the lost; that He no longer speaks to the church or guides it, and they ridicule those who say that God spoke to them. But if we say we are Pentecostals, the Baptists will think we are not part of them. For that reason, we are not a church affiliated with any council or denomination; we belong to the body of Christ and we work on behalf of all its members, born-again Christians who live in the Spirit, regardless of their affiliation

From the beginning, God has revealed to us as a church that He constituted us to proclaim His virtues and to bear the image of the Son, who is the brightness of His glory. So, in the way God guided Israel as a theocratic people, He also defined His purpose with Israel to Pharaoh: “Let My people go, that they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness” (Exod 5:1). This means that they were priests; and later, when they came out, God told Israel that He had made them a people of kings and priests. “… you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; but because the LORD loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Therefore know that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments” (Deut 7:6-9).

Consequently, there were two things that united Israel and identified it as a people: one God and one altar. God told Israel through Moses not to worship anywhere other than in the place that the LORD would choose from among all the tribes of Israel. And God chose Zion, and it came to be the center of worship, because God wanted them to have a single sanctuary so that everyone would come three times a year to worship in that same place. And the altar and the worship of one God identified them as a nation. In fact, that is what has kept Israel united through time. A people that has emigrated to the world several times nevertheless maintains its identity, because it worships one God at one altar.

Because Israel was called to be a kingdom of priests, God established for it the annual feasts, the Sabbath, and the jubilees, so that Israel would celebrate its most important experiences. The Passover, the celebration of the way God brought them out of Egypt and redeemed them. The Feast of Tabernacles, how God was with them in the wilderness and they dwelt in tents. Pentecost, which was the Feast of Weeks, the seven-week feast that speaks to us of the harvest and came fifty days after the Passover. Some see in Pentecost the celebration of the giving of the Law, because it came so many days after leaving Egypt. But we can sum up that the feasts of Israel were their experience with God.

Naturally, we Christians do not have to keep those feasts, but the lesson remains for us that God celebrates His experiences with His people, and in that way marks them and makes them remember. This means that the feasts were memorials. In the New Testament we have only one memorial, and it is the Lord’s Supper: “do this in remembrance of Me.” (Luke 22:19). This means that one single memorial unites all Christians: the Lord’s Supper. But in our case at the local level, God taught us to celebrate His works in our lives. I clarify that we do not celebrate a date, but an event.

We celebrate three feasts a year. The first feast is in March, the anniversary, when God made us a church in 1986. But we do not celebrate the anniversary; we celebrate what God did on that date. In this case, it is that He took us out of where we were, revealed His Kingdom to us and made us a church. In the month of March we celebrate that experience with God. The second feast we celebrate is in August, to remember all the dealing by which He formed us, ministerially speaking, which we explained in detail in the preceding pages. God told us that when we finished building and inaugurated that building, it would mean that He had already finished His process with us. We finished exactly in 1994, and God told us that we were ready to enter.

However, we made several attempts to enter the new building, and something would happen so that we could not enter, because something would be damaged and we had to rebuild again. Until the date arrived that God had marked for us: August 12, 1994. We now understand that twelve is Government in biblical numerology, and that eight is a new beginning, and that God was going to begin His government with us. And the Lord called that day, or that date, the “Crossing of the Jordan.” So, on that day, the group of brothers and sisters, we left the building where we were, carrying the twelve flags. Now you can see, on the platform, the twelve flags. Those flags represent the twelve stones that Joshua raised or set in the Jordan. God told us: “When you enter there, instead of stones, find twelve flags with the names of God: Jehovah Nissi, Jehovah Shalom, Jehovah Sidkenu, El Elyon, etc. Twelve names of God to point out or emphasize what God is for us as a church: the All.

God told us that we were to celebrate this date every year for as long as we exist as a church. He also told us that it should be two weeks of celebration, as Solomon did, and that the pastor, when the time came, should read the prayer that Solomon also made when dedicating the temple, for seven days and then seven days more. So, in those two weeks we commemorate God’s dealing during those eight years, the Wilderness, and how He made us cross the Jordan. We asked the police for a permit and walked through all the streets and entered the building where we now worship. That was something very significant for us, and those flags that we set up on the platform when we arrived are there as a testimony, like the twelve stones when the children of Israel crossed the Jordan.

That feast was very important to us. When we arrived at the last day of the feast, the fourteenth day, and read Solomon’s prayer for the fourteenth time, the Lord highlighted to us that verse where He says: “…for now I have chosen and sanctified this house, that My name may be there forever; and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually” (2 Chr 7:16). At that moment, a prophetess, seized by the Spirit, said to us: “Thus says Jehovah Amanecer de la Esperanza: I will do with you the same as I promised Solomon; that is why I had you read this prayer these fourteen days, because from now on I will put My name, My eyes and My heart in this house.” And that prophetic word has been very important to us, and we have seen how God has put His name, His eyes and His heart in this house.

The third annual feast is in the month of November; it is the reminder of when the radio ministry began, in 1983, which culminated in a congregation. Today, several decades later, one can see the precision, how accurate God was in defining that name, El Amanecer de la Esperanza.

The jubilees, for their part, took that name in 2001, but originally we called them “Clamor.” There is an instruction that God gave to Moses to blow the trumpets so that the whole congregation would gather before him at the door of the tabernacle of meeting. But if only one was blown, then the leaders, the heads of the divisions of Israel, were to gather before him (Num 10:1-4). Later, God made us see that the gathering of the leadership of our church every seven days (on Saturdays, at 6 in the morning, which is the last watch of the 24-hour week of prayer) represented the blast of one trumpet. But the convocation, every seventh Saturday, of the whole ministry, represented the blast of the two trumpets to gather the whole congregation. In fact, all the churches of our ministry and brothers and sisters from other congregations come to those gatherings. At that time we worship God with songs and receive from Him His abundant blessing, a prophetic message and a word of exhortation and consolation.

Something important is that when we were in the “wilderness,” God began to prophesy that He was going to send us to the nations, and that days would come when the airports in the area would fill up with ministers coming from the nations to worship with us at this “Crossing of the Jordan” feast. And indeed, at the beginning it was so. We held an event with pastors, and they came from all over the world. Sometimes we hosted more than a hundred pastors and leaders who came on that occasion to worship with us. He also told us that we were going to go to the nations, and that seemed like a dream, because He was going to fill the airports during those feasts; and that is exactly what happened, in the three airports of the area. The brothers and sisters went back and forth, like taxi drivers, looking for the brothers and sisters who were coming from the nations through Newark, Kennedy and LaGuardia airports. God fulfilled every one of His words.

Likewise, when we read the prayer each day at the feast, God had told us to also pray for a different nation. So, each day we pray for a nation, for fourteen days. After we finished, on the fourteenth day, God told us that He wanted us to go to each one of those nations to pray for them. And He began to give revelations of that purpose for the nations. After we went to those fourteen nations, He then sent us to the rest of the world, to pray for the nations, for the church in general, so that in those years, 1995 and 1996, we traveled the entire world praying for the church. We went to countless countries, to the four corners of the earth, to the south of Patagonia, to the farthest north in Alaska, to the East and to the West, to what the four corners of the earth represent. We went to many nations of Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania and America.

Later on, God sent us to the places where there had been revival. We went to Israel twice, to Egypt, to almost all the main countries of Europe; to the countries of South America, representing the entire world. We went to Asia Minor, where the seven churches of Revelation were, in Turkey; we went to the island of Patmos; to the church in Germany where Luther nailed the theses in Wittenberg. We also went to the house where John Wesley was born, where there was revival, and to Piedmont, where the Waldensians were. In short, wherever there had been revivals, we went, with a prophetic word, to speak to the wells: “Spring up, O well!” (Num 21:17), praying that God would raise up those revivals again. There we began to understand in a broader way what the apostolic-prophetic ministry to the nations means.

In the same way, from the beginning God established for us a twenty-four-hour ministry of intercession. In those twenty-four hours we have countless brothers and sisters who are employed full time and part time, simply to pray twenty-four hours. In those twenty-four hours without ceasing, there are people assigned to their shifts, each shift three hours long, following the example of Israel’s watches every three hours. There is a twenty-four-hour ministry of intercession, devoted exclusively to prayer.

In those twenty-four hours we pray for the three groups where the heart of God is. We see that when God gave Paul the revelation of the heavenly vision (Acts 26:16-18), he said that God sent him to the children of Israel, to the nations (that is, the Gentiles) and to the kings of the earth. So we pray for the kings of the earth, that is, for those who are in authority; for the Gentiles (the lost, the nations), for the church and for the children of Israel, twenty-four hours every day. And something interesting is that God commanded us to pray for a different nation each day of the year. So we pray for three hundred sixty-five nations. That is why our emphasis is on worship and on the priesthood: the personal priesthood, the family priesthood, the congregational priesthood. And God has spoken to us much in our teachings about the offering, about what pleases God and what the altar and worship are. We see that the apostles were very wise when the church grew and there was that conflict over the daily distribution, because certain widows felt overlooked. They said: “It is not desirable that we should leave the word of God and serve tables” (Acts 6:2 NKJV). They had the vision that today’s church has lost, in general, which is that the purpose is never sacrificed, and that purpose is prayer and the word; that is our priesthood. Prayer and the word are what matter most. Ministering to the Lord in our personal priesthood, and the preaching of the word, constitute the most important duties assigned to the church.

In 1995, a year after God established us and we “crossed the Jordan,” through three prophets, God told Pastor Radhamés that He was going to take him to the city, that is, to minister to the local area in New York. Although he had already been on a radio program for more than ten years, during which he went from secular stations to a Christian station in the local area, God told him that He was going to take him out of there in order to send him, first of all, to the city. In September 1995, one month after we celebrated the feast, God sent us and a revival began at that station. As was to be expected, there was a process of God with that station, and He used some men in the city, and we entered into that move. And just as God was dealing at the city level with certain men, He was dealing with us simultaneously. But then He joined the two together, and united us with those ministers with whom God was working in a similar process, very much like ours. And when we came together, naturally, each one gave what he had received from God.

We contributed the prophetic aspect, the aspect in which God made us strong, in the vision of the Kingdom of God. At that station, God was using a servant in a daily program called the worship segment, and when we arrived preaching the message of the kingdom for half an hour, that servant of God came up to us and said to the pastor: “Radhamés, I feel that you should take my time.” His time was an hour and a half, plus our half hour, making two hours. And the pastor, practically unprepared, because he had gone to preach for half an hour, had to preach for two. On that occasion, he remembers that he spoke about the nature of the Kingdom of God, and it was such a great impact that pastors began to call the station. When he returned the following Tuesday to his half-hour program, the servant again told him that he felt he should take his place, and so he did for several weeks. In the end he told Pastor Radhamés to keep his hour-and-a-half program on Tuesdays. God used that man, and he flowed in a very beautiful, very powerful way, and God used Pastor Radhamés in the prophetic aspect, thus establishing two aspects in that worship segment.

Because God has placed so much emphasis on us regarding that aspect of worship, there was a very beautiful flow, which other servants of God also joined. So it was notable that at that station there was a most powerful experience of the Spirit, which Pastor Radhamés called a revival in the city. In that way we entered, and God used him in a powerful way in the prophetic aspect in the city, with incredible precision and accuracy. His completely spontaneous program was full of words of knowledge and wisdom; things so that even he himself was amazed at the jewels that came out of his mouth. His audience was general, but primarily pastors who listened to the word. The way God used him, as He also used others, but in the prophetic aspect, was something that impacted the Hispanic church of the city, and there was an impartation that still prevails. Undoubtedly, we were no longer the same after that time.

In the midst of that move, the leaders of the station took advantage of the moment to buy the station, but afterward they saw the move of God as a threat, so the Lord took us out of there. He told us to leave, and the group of pastors left, to this day. Nevertheless, God has not silenced His voice, and through the media He has provided us we continue impacting the church of the city; we continue raising an altar of worship to God.

“Not yet” is Pastor Juan Radhamés Fernández’s answer regarding the fulfillment of that ideal he held in his heart at the beginning, concerning the church he asked of God. These were his words:

“Until we reach glorification and sanctification is finished, the dream is not finished. I believe that the closer one draws to God, the more one knows God, the more dissatisfied we feel. Until the eternal comes and that which is in part passes away and we arrive at the fullness in glorification, and the process of sanctification is finished, we are not going to be satisfied. And I say this with all honesty. There is a very great dissatisfaction with myself, with our church, with the rest of the body. I believe we have not reached that level. We have not succeeded in satisfying God with regard to the purpose, because God was satisfied only by Christ.

“We have not set the standard as a church, nor has the rest of the body. But God has a remnant in the world. God has within the body a faithful remnant. Before, I called them the children of the Kingdom, but after a revelation, I call them “children beloved,” those who please the Father, as Jesus did. God has revealed to us that there is a difference between “beloved children” and “children beloved.” “Beloved children” are all believers, but “children beloved” are those who live as Jesus did, to please the Father. Those who live the vision of pleasing God are truly very few. Naturally, we will not go to heaven because we have pleased God, but because Christ has already pleased Him. But if we are sanctified and live the purpose, we will make God happy.”