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Great Bible Truths with Dr David Petts

Great Bible Truths with Dr David Petts

De : Dr David Petts - Pentecostal preacher former AoG Bible College Principal
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 Dr David Petts is an international speaker and author who is best known for his 27 years as Principal at Mattersey Hall Bible College and his in-depth but easily understood teaching on the Holy Spirit. Now retired, he enjoys preaching locally and sometimes further afield. These podcasts are your opportunity to experience Dr Petts' teaching first hand!David Petts Christianisme Ministère et évangélisme Spiritualité
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    • 309 My Story Talk 22 Facing New Challenges

      309 My Story Talk 22 Facing New Challenges
      Jul 5 2025
      My Story Talk 22 Facing New Challenges We said goodbye to Basingstoke after a moving farewell weekend at the end of July 1978 and moved to Mattersey with a great sense of excitement and anticipation. We knew without a shadow of a doubt that the Lord was sending us there, but we were also aware that great challenges lay ahead, not just for the College, but for us as a family too. Challenges for the family The immediate challenge for the family was that there was nowhere suitable for us to live. The College did not have space to accommodate us for more than a few weeks before the students returned in September and although living in the attic rooms of the old building was fun for a while, it was hardly ideal for a normal family life. But fortunately we knew that the situation would not last for long. Because I was an only child and, therefore, our children were my parents’ only grandchildren, our moving to Mattersey meant that we were now 250 miles away. Naturally, my parents wanted to be nearer to us than that and decided that they would move to be near us. Some new houses and bungalows were being built in the village, right opposite the College and Mum and Dad decided to buy one of them. However, they had still not sold their bungalow in Dorset. So to resolve the problem of our accommodation as a family the Board of Governors, with the help of the AoG Property Trust, loaned my parents the purchase price of the new bungalow in Mattersey on the understanding that Eileen, the children and I could live in it until a new house could be built for us in the College grounds. My parents were to repay the interest free loan once they had sold their bungalow. This arrangement worked very well and for our first year at Mattersey we lived in the bungalow, and in the summer of 1979 had the joy of moving into Koinonia, a new four-bedroomed house which we had had the privilege of helping to design, along with the challenges of overseeing the erection of a new-build property! It was also wonderful to have my parents living closer to us than ever before since we were married. But housing was not the only challenge facing us as a family during our first year at Mattersey. The children had to adjust to new schools. Deborah was 14 and Sarah 13 and having been used to a Comprehensive School in Basingstoke had now been accepted by the Elizabethan High School in Retford where the curriculum was different and meant that they had quite a bit of catching up to do in some subjects. Jonathan was just 7 and fortunately there was a primary school in the village, where I think he settled in quite well, although he had to get used to the fact that the other children spoke with a different accent and thought that he was ‘posh’. He once came home and said to Eileen, Mummy, my friends don’t say ‘something’. They say ‘summat’. But by and large the children adjusted very well, as also did Eileen who had now become the College Matron. This was not a position she had sought. She had thought that when I became the principal she would just be my wife and lend a hand in the College when she could. However, when, shortly after my appointment, Aaron Linford, the Chairman of the Board of Governors, had asked me, Will Mrs. Petts be the Matron? and I had replied that she was not expecting to be employed by the College, he said, Well, if she becomes the Matron we can pay her. And that, of course, settled it! It did take time for Eileen to adjust to her new role which entailed heading up the entire domestic side of life at the College, but over the 21 years that she did it she grew in confidence, exercising her authority with kindness and firmness, signing off her memos to students with the letter M, which, I think some of the students understood to stand for Mum rather than Matron. I attribute much of our success at Mattersey to her, though, if she were still with us, I know she would be quick to deny it. So the move to Mattersey presented challenges to all of us as a family, but there were challenges for me personally too. These included the challenges of new responsibilities, new relationships with the staff and governors, and the expectations that my fellow AoG ministers had of me. The challenge of new responsibilities The Principal of the Bible College was appointed by the General Council, meeting at its Annual General Conference. (The General Council, which under God, was the final authority for decision-making in the fellowship, comprised all accredited AoG ministers together with delegates or representatives from churches which had no minister). The appointment was for two years, and although this was later changed to four, it meant that I was subject to re-election on a regular basis. Like all other Heads of Department in AoG (e.g. Home Missions, Overseas Missions, etc.), as Principal I had to submit an annual report to the Conference...
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      18 min
    • 308 My Story Talk 21 The Rocky Road to Mattersey 1972-1978

      308 My Story Talk 21 The Rocky Road to Mattersey 1972-1978
      Jun 24 2025
      My Story Talk 21 The Rocky Road to Mattersey (1972-78) Welcome to Talk 21 in our series where I’m reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. Last time I finished my series of talks on the years we spent I Basingstoke by telling you how in January 1972 God clearly told me that we were going to live at the Bible College. This didn’t happen until 1978 when I was appointed principal of the College which by then had moved from Kenley to Mattersey. Today’s talk will cover some of difficulties we faced on the way and how the Lord eventually brought us through. In December 1972, after he had served only two years as the Principal at Kenley, George Jeffreys Williamson suffered a heart attack, probably as a result of over-work combined with an accusation that was made against him by one of the students, and shortly after this the Board of Governors reluctantly accepted his resignation. Meanwhile, as there was no resident tutor at the time due to the departure of John Phillips, the Board asked some of the visiting lecturers, including me, to spend a few days at the college encouraging and taking care of the students. While I was there, Eric Dando, a member of the AoG Executive Council, asked me confidentially if I had ever thought of becoming the principal. This was not a complete surprise to me because of what the Lord had shown me earlier that year about living at the College, but at that stage I had not thought that I might be the principal. And I had never told anyone except Eileen about it. So I asked Eric why he was asking that question. He told me that it looked likely that Williamson would sadly be resigning and he felt that I might be a suitable person to take over. Although I felt that at the age of 33 I was possibly too young to be appointed to such a responsible position, I shared with him how the Lord had spoken to me back in January. The months that followed were something of a rollercoaster as Eileen and I lived with the tension that we all experience in times of uncertainty. We knew that the Lord had called us to the college, but was it his plan that I should be the principal? And was it to happen yet? All we could do was hang on to what God had shown us and rest in the certainty that whatever happens God is always in control. As it turned out, because a new principal could not be appointed until the General Conference the following May, the Board of Governors asked David Powell, the pastor of the Rotherham Assembly, to take care of the College until then. Meanwhile I was waiting to see if I would be nominated. Apart from Eric Dando, Arnold Shaw from Bracknell and Pastor Appleby from Reading had also expressed their confidence in me, but although individuals could make suggestions, nominations would only be accepted which had the support of at least one official council. And when Pastor Appleby suggested my name in a District Council meeting, the chairman, Billy Richards, said, In a few years, perhaps, which was to prove to be prophetic. I was encouraged by this, as Richards was, like Dando, a member of the Executive Council and a man I highly respected, and it was evident that he did see the potential in me but felt that now was not the right time, which confirmed what I had already suspected. It was clear that I would not yet be leaving Basingstoke, but that the Lord would fulfil his purpose for me at the proper time, and I had peace about that. That is until the unprecedented events that took place in May at the General Conference! Immediately before the vote was to take place to determine which of the men who had been nominated would be the next principal, there was a prophetic word saying that the man God had chosen knew who he was and that he should come forward and declare it! This threw the conference into confusion as it was completely contrary to the normal democratic process practised at conference. The Chairman had to make a decision. The prophecy had to be judged. He conferred with the Executive Council. The matter was put to the conference, and it was agreed to proceed in line with the prophecy. The man whom God had chosen knew who he was, and he should come forward and declare it. Was I the man? The problem was, I knew I was called to the college, but the Lord had never told me that I would ever be the principal. But while I was still churning these things over in my mind, David Powell, one of those who had been nominated, walked forward and told conference why he felt he was the man. I need to say, in passing, how unfair this procedure was to the two other nominees, one of whom, Clifford Rees, was not present because he was speaking at a meeting in another part of the conference. He told me afterwards that he would not have accepted nomination if he had not felt that he was the man. After Powell had made his statement the chairman gave opportunity for people to make comments or to ask...
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      21 min
    • 307 My Story Talk 20 Ministry in Basingstoke 1968-78 Part 5

      307 My Story Talk 20 Ministry in Basingstoke 1968-78 Part 5
      Jun 12 2025
      My Story Talk 20 Ministry at Basingstoke 1968-78 Part 5 Welcome to Talk 20 in our series where I’m reflecting on God’s goodness to me throughout my life. Last time I was telling you how God was clearly blessing my trips abroad, to Switzeralnd, France, Belgium and the USA, and, thanks entirely to the gift that God had given me, my teaching was in increasingly great demand both at home and overseas. But how did all this fit in with my responsibilities as the pastor of the church in Basingstoke? The Lord showed me that the answer lay in two things – writing and team ministry. Writing ministry Today, of course, it’s relatively easy to communicate with people all over the world by a variety of options available through the internet. But before the internet, apart from radio and television, speaking on which was not readily available, Christian literature was the main means of communicating with potentially thousands of people. What you write can travel further than you can. One example of this was Andy Anstey, a Canadian who became a student at Mattersey during the early years of my principalship. He told me that he had been baptised in the Spirit in a university library in Canada as a result of reading my book, The Dynamic Difference. I have never been to Canada, but one of my books had found its way there. It had started as a booklet I wrote for the Students’ Pentecostal Fellowship in 1971, Be Filled with the Spirit. Jim Hall had used it on my first trip to Illinois and persuaded me to expand it, as a result of which Receive Power was published in 1974 in time for my second trip to the States. It was finally published in 1978 by Gospel Publishing House, Springfield MO, under the title, The Dynamic Difference. I was also writing articles for magazines like Redemption Tidings and Youth Aflame, the AoG youth magazine. At Basingstoke I had given a series of Bible studies on the Fundamental Truths of Assemblies of God, and I asked Vernon Ralphs, the editor of Youth Aflame, if he would like me to write a series of articles on the subject. Those articles were eventually published by Peniel Press as a book under the title, Know the Truth, in 1976, and with the cooperation of the publisher, I was able to give a free copy to every AoG minister at the General Conference that year. And something similar happened with another series of articles I wrote for Youth Aflame. At Colchester I had duplicated a series of short talks for young people who had just given their lives to Jesus and these were eventually published as a book in 1977 under the title How to Live for Jesus. Both these books are still being used, over fifty years later, by a number of churches today, though Know the Truth is now published under the title You’d Better Believe It. It has been translated into several languages including German, French, Italian, Finnish, Spanish, Urdu, and Nepalese. Another publication that is still being used widely around the world is the distance learning course I wrote on the Major Prophets for the International Correspondence Institute in Brussels under the title Themes from the Prophets. I have already mentioned that this was a subject I was lecturing on in Kenley Bible College and I already had many pages of lecture notes that I had produced and duplicated for the students. So when Dr George Flattery, the brother of Warren and founder and director of ICI, asked me if I would be willing to write the course, I was happy to do so. This involved several visits to Brussels, each of which lasted for two weeks, where I could get on with writing the course undistracted. It was also a great opportunity to meet other Pentecostal educators from around the world, including the renowned New Testament scholar, Professor Gordon Fee who was writing the course on 1 Corinthians and became a good friend. So I will always be grateful for the opportunity I was given to be a part of ICI, but especially for the induction teaching they offered to all their course writers, which included the requirement to read The Art of Readable Writing by Rudolf Flesch the basic message of which, as I remember it, was to write as you speak, rather than writing in the academic style you were required to use at school or university. Other things Flesch recommended were, wherever possible, to use short words rather than long ones, personal names rather than pronouns, the active voice rather than the passive, and short sentences rather than long ones – which prompts me to close this sentence before it gets any longer! So, to summarise, I had realised that by using literature a person’s ministry could be extended far beyond their time and ability to travel. But that in itself did not solve the problem of reconciling what I perceived to be my obligations to the church where I was pastor with the travelling ministry the Lord was clearly opening up for me. And, as I was praying about ...
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      17 min

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