THERE.IS.A.MAN.HERE.THAT.CAN.TURN.ON.THE.LIGHT_ JEFF.IN V-6 N-1 SUNDAY_ 63-1229M
53 Oh, Gentiles, as I have said, who will pull that sword with me? He wants a fresh drink, this morning, not this old stagnated church creeds and things we’re fooling around with. He wants genuine faith in His Word, who will believe every Word of It. Let’s go to the well and bring back a drink, a refreshment; a worship that’s built upon not creeds and denomination. But a genuine Spirit worship, with Christ among us, living His Life the way He wants to, among us…
Pastor Paul and Sister Margaret Baird
Pastor Paul John Baird, son of the late John Baird, a Doctor of Geophysics who went on to become Vice President of Research and Development for the Control Data Corporation, was raised in Minnesota on Lake Minnetonka in the Excelsior area and is a graduate of St Olaf College and the University of Minnesota.
On September 1, 1973, Brother Baird wed his lovely wife, Margaret Eugenia Good, daughter of the late Dr Robert A. Good, who performed the first successful bone marrow transplant and was featured on the front cover of Time magazine March 19, 1973. Parents to five, wonderful children, they have made their abode in Minnesota during their years of marriage together.
Brother Baird, originally introduced to the Assembly of God in the fall of 1972 after his miraculous conversion August 28, 1972, first spoke ‘under the anointing’ in the fall of that same year in an Assemblies of God youth meeting whose goal was to turn young rebellious hearts who had been backslid back to the Lord. The outcome of that meeting was that every teenage young man attending (about 15) was brought under conviction and was on their feet, hands up to the Lord, weeping under the power of God. After over 40 years of ministry in the USA, Scotland, England, Trinidad, Ireland, France, India, Liberia and other countries, Brother Baird describes this above youth meeting results as perhaps the ‘greatest miracle’ he has ever seen in his own ministry. He states, “To me, the grace to repent is the greatest miracle of all.”
Forbidden by the Holy Spirit to join any organization of man, Brother Baird was led to a spirit filled non-denominational church in Rapid City, South Dakota whose Pastor was Donald Derkson, a former Mennonite and a graduate Wheaton Bible College and a part of the renown Wycliffe Bible Translators.
Pastor Baird and Pastor Derkson worked together to establish a small group in Minnesota in late 1974. Pastor Derkson recommended Brother Baird to be their full time pastor and he was elected unanimously in July of 1975. Established under divine order, this was to become the first ‘message’ church in Minnesota.
This was the foundation of the Church at Minneapolis, which later became named Divine Love Christian Fellowship in 1995. The church had learned that only those with genuine Divine Love (agape) that Jesus had originally sought from Peter would be able to endure the trial of our faith and one day be changed into his very image and be taken home to be forever with the Lord.
The mission of Brother Bairds ministry is to reflect the life and character through the Body of Christ he pastors expressed in the opening quotation of the late William Marrion Branham. Brother Branham was a minister that God chose to fulfill the ministry of the end-time Elijah prophet promised to the Gentiles for the work of restoration to the original Pauline and Pentecostal truths foretold by Jesus in Matthew 17:10-13 to prepare the Bride of Christ to ‘meet Him in the air’ at the change of our bodies on that glorious day!