The Life and Ministry of Billy and Shirley Cole

by Doug Joseph

I have always had the attitude of submission to the pastor where I was the guest evangelist. I’ve always been submitted to my pastor. If I was doing something he did not like, I would quit. I would not “bulldoze.” I would not overrun a pastor or even try to say “God wanted me to do this or that.” I would just back off. Some people would call it compromise, but to me it is good sense. We went to a place and they were

That was my first experience of revelation of what was going to happen in service.

Revelation of what God was going to do in a service.

I could not speak their language. I did not know their culture. I did not know or understand them, and they did not know or understand me. Yet God had sent me, and He had anointed me. In just a few years there, we baptized six thousand people in Jesus name.

Above: Mission

Being so overwhelmed caused me to search the Scriptures to see if there was any loophole in our teaching. There is no loophole in our doctrine; repentance, baptism, and the infilling of the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in tongues is the Bible way of salvation. I tried desperately to find a way around it. There is no way around it. If one is honest, he will come to the same conclusion.

I am going to pray until we hear from God.” I prayed until I was absolutely exhausted.

But the doctrine is sound. There is no loophole, if one is truly honest.

I realized that when God gave me authority over the prince of Thailand that did not mean that everybody in Thailand was going to be saved, but it meant that everybody who wanted to be saved could be.

Practically every Thai home had within their yard a spirit house, built to look like a miniature temple. At night they would light a candle, place it inside of the spirit house, and worship. Then in the morning they would carry

food out to the spirit house to feed the spirits. This was supposed to keep the evil spirits away from them. There were an estimated seventy million Buddhist idols in Thailand.

The Holy Ghost fell on them all at once, and it was accompanied by a sound like a rushing mighty wind! Several Buddhist neighbors came running, because they thought that an airplane had crashed. When asked why they thought that, they said they had heard a sound come down that sounded like “WHOOO!”

Often, each notable miracle would result in a church coming into existence,

had never been to school a day in her life, but when she got the Holy Ghost she said, “This is so wonderful. I am so happy. I magnify the name of Jesus.”

Tongues of fire fell in a service up in the Golden Triangle. A policeman ran into the building and started trying to beat flames off of people, because he could see fire all over everything. He was beating their backs. He was trying to beat the fire off of them.

Above: Here the words of a young T. F. Tenney are interpreted into the Thai language by a young Billy Cole.

T. F. Tenny

After the breakthrough in Thailand, we averaged probably one hundred people per month receiving the Holy Ghost.

One day after a service, I was sitting on the altar, when I was approached by a young preacher wearing blue jeans and a leather jacket. He said, “My church is next.” I asked, “Brother, where is your church?” He took me to a window and pointed to the top of a mountain. I said, “Oh, brother, I cannot go. I cannot climb that mountain.” He fell down on his knees and wept. He said, “You must go. They are very shy mountain people, and they will not come down here into the city.” I sat back down on the altar, and I slipped my shoes off. I said, “Touch the bottom of my feet.” When he did, his hands were red with blood from my feet. I said, “My body is falling apart. I just cannot make it up that mountain.” He said, “Wait here a minute.” That minute turned out to be an hour. He returned with eight brethren, and they were carrying a chair that was wired to bamboo poles. They literally carried me to the top of that mountain. There, thirty-nine more people received the Holy Ghost. At the last count I was told (and that was several years ago) about 10,000 people had been filled with the Holy Ghost in Sulawesi.

Literally hundreds were filled with the Holy Ghost at that time. We averaged about one hundred per week receiving the Holy Ghost.

Then I said something that I should not have. I said, “God has sent me to Wheeling to humiliate me.” At that moment Shirley reached around and slapped me hard on the face, and she told me, “Shut up!” She said, “You are a man of God and one of the greatest preachers in the world. Don’t you ever talk like that again.” As you might guess, I stopped crying at that time, and she has never slapped me like that again.

Suddenly I saw a vision of thousands and thousands of demons. One of them stepped forward to me and declared that they were from Asia and that they hated us. Great boldness came upon me then, and I said, “If you are from Asia, then I have authority over you. I command you to go and to never torment me again.” Suddenly they all just disappeared from my vision.

Upon arrival at the local church, not many people were there. I was personally very discouraged by that. While talking to the Lord, I said, “We have worked so hard to get here, and now there is no one here.” Then the Lord rebuked me, saying, “Did I not dry up the river?” So, I lay down on the floor (for there were no beds) and went to sleep. When I awoke, the place was being shaken because hundreds of saints had gathered and were worshiping the Lord. That day, 108 people received the Holy Ghost. It was the largest outpouring of the Spirit that we had seen up to that time (before the large crusades began to happen).

Whenever I taught from the Book of Acts in churches, camp meetings, and conferences, I read aloud the miracles in Acts and then told of similar miracles God had given before our very eyes, which were comparable to the miracles in Acts. At such times I would always say, “One miracle in the Book of Acts that I have not personally seen is for three thousand to receive the Holy Ghost in a single service, but I shall see it.”

I had spoken that word of faith for about twenty-seven years before the fulfillment came. Then God began to establish in me a ministry of very large Holy Ghost crusades.

The Holy Ghost fell on those people like a blanket. Over 3,000 people

received the Holy Ghost in that single crusade weekend.

For the very next big crusade, I traveled to Papua New Guinea. Brother Doug Klinedinst went with me, at great sacrifice, and on Saturday morning, he preached a powerful message about Pentecost. At the end of his message I was inspired, and I prophesied that God was going to give us a Day of Pentecost outpouring, meaning 3,000 would receive the Holy Ghost.

I was worried because I had said something at the end of the prophecy, which God had not told me to say: I had arrogantly added, “If it does not happen, you just tell everyone that Billy Cole is a liar and a false prophet.”

I had some prior success with commanding the weather, and so I went out onto the porch of the house and commanded the rain to stop. Every time I commanded the rain to stop, it rained harder! So I stopped.

Above: At one of the annual crusades in Papua New Guinea, at the time when the Holy Ghost was poured out upon the people, a visible cloud came down. This is an un-retouched photograph of that event.

I had always made it a point to keep my mouth shut after God did something great like one of those large crusades.

But that was Bro. Klinedinst’s first time to go with me. After the service that night, he said something about us going back to the house to fast and pray all night long. I just said, “That would be stupid. God has already done the miracle. There is no reason to fast and pray all night now, unless we just want to take credit for what God has already done.”

During the crusades the church there grew from approximately 20,000 constituents to about 60,000 constituents.

There were too many people for an altar call. I did not know what to do with that crowd. That’s when the Lord first inspired me with the solution: to speak the word of faith, after having them repent right where they were standing. I would stop them after repenting, and speak the word of faith for them to receive the Holy Ghost.

That was the first place where I saw people healed simply through the shadow of the man of God falling on them.

Our problem herein America is that we do not respect each other. We do not have faith in each other.

We are Pentecostal, but they are Apostolic, and because of that, we cannot understand one another.

Philippines Crusade

said, “God will do everything that you have faith to declare for it to happen. If you have faith to declare it, God is going to do it.”

Then, I told them that I was about to speak the word of faith, at which time they should begin worshiping the Lord with a great shout, and that the Holy Ghost would fall. Finally, I spoke the word of faith, by commanding them to, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost!”

T. F. Tenney, has so often wisely declared that, “Success without a successor is failure.”

The greatest problem in evangelizing the world is our attitude toward each other. That’s our number one problem. It’s not the devil. It’s not the world. It’s our own sorry attitudes.

Our Fundamental Doctrine has five very important points: Repentance; Baptism in water by immersion in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ; The infilling of the Holy Ghost, speaking with other tongues; Unity; and Respect for each other.

Wherever I have preached outside of the church that I pastored, I preached one of those points. I never preached anything else. And that is one of the reasons why I had so many converts—because I was not doing something that was none of my business.

The focus that makes my ministry powerful is that (1) I have learned what I can do, and I have learned what I cannot do; and (2) I do what I can, and what I cannot do I leave for someone else to do.

I have had several heroes in my lifetime that deeply impacted me and greatly influenced my ministry. Every one of my heroes was a preacher.

“God never makes a mistake.”

Do Not Be Distracted After you have found out what God wants you to do, it is very important to stay focused on it. Do not be distracted.

But the good work of casting out a devil—while a valid work of the church—was of a lower priority than cooperating with God and seeing those men filled with the Holy Ghost. I refused to be distracted even by a good work.

The Hindus like brass bands. During my preaching, a Hindu band came marching right down through the center of the crowd, playing their saxophones and trumpets, etc. They marched right up to where I was preaching, playing their instruments. It was a distraction. I lifted my hands and said, “In Jesus name!” Immediately, the band became unable to make a sound, even though they were still trying to blow on their instruments. They then left, and we continued with the service, and God blessed.

If the devil cannot distract you, he will try to distract those you are reaching. Through wisdom and the power of God, you can overcome the distraction, and see God do mighty things in the lives of men, women, and children who are pressing to enter the Kingdom of God.