I would have never started “The Way” had it not been for the many miracles I witnessed when I began sharing these Bible Lessons with others.

In 1994, I founded a small support group for entrepreneurs. The discussions turned toward the role and will of God as pertains to business. I began to share Scriptures with the group that indicate how it is God’s will for His people to prosper. A lifelong friend of my family, whose name was Pat, was a part of this group. He was very surprised to learn that God cared about his finances. He was also intrigued at the notion that we were designed to prosper. Growing up in the same Catholic church and schools as I did, he said, "I always had the idea that God was up there keeping track of everything I was doing wrong so He would know how much to punish me when I died."

With his new found wisdom, Pat, a man nearly 50 years old, became interested in becoming closer to this God who cared about his finances. He began to pray and read the Bible daily, something he had never done before.

Pat was having big financial problems when he came to our group. He was a hard working farmer who worked 15 to16 hours each day, seven days a week. Yet, as hard as he worked, he was going deeper and deeper in debt each year. He couldn’t have worked any harder. He was desperate for an answer.

One day, while he was reading the Bible and seeking the LORD’s help, a man pulled into his driveway. He got out and rang Pat’s doorbell. He was a stranger to Pat. He asked Pat if he would be interested in leasing out his farm. This gentleman was anxious to get into the farming business. How he chose Pat’s farm is a "mystery" because this gentleman had to drive past many farms to get to Pat’s.

Pat showed the man around and the next week the man came back with an offer. This man was going to do all the work of milking the cows. He was going to sell the milk and pay Pat thousands of dollars each week for this privilege. In fact, the amount this man agreed to pay Pat, was the EXACT amount of money Pat was currently making AFTER HE DID ALL THE WORK. Pat, of course, signed the lease. He continued making the exact amount of money he had been making without having to work at all.

You can only imagine what a shot in the arm this testimony was to me and the other members of our group. But the story only got better... Suddenly, Pat found himself without anything to do. That week he saw an ad in the paper for a guidance counselor at the local high school. Pat had always wanted to work with kids, so he went and applied for the job. He was told that a Masters Degree was required. Pat didn’t have a Masters Degree, but he applied anyway and was given an interview. A couple weeks later, the principal called him and said, "Pat, there were 64 people who applied for this job. Most had Masters Degrees, which is required for the position, but I feel I’m supposed to give the job to you. It’s yours if you want it." He took it. Again, another miracle. But it gets better…

Pat had more ambition than to be a guidance counselor. He had been dreaming about opening his own restaurant for many years. He decided this was the time. He told me he was going to start a tiny restaurant right on his farm. He was only going to be open weekends. He and his wife and two kids would be all that was needed to run it.

Even I was skeptical. Pat’s farm was way out in the boondocks in an area about 30 miles from the nearest city. Pat had no money or restaurant experience. He told me that the LORD was telling him, "Build it and they will come." I was still very skeptical. Using what little credit he had left on a credit card, he put up a tiny shell of a building. I gave him a free ad in a coupon book I published. Like a miracle, people began to find their way out to the tiny farming area of Middleville, New York. I began to hear his restaurant talked about wherever I went. People were driving 60 miles round trip to be served southern fried chicken on a paper plate. It was a miracle. But it got even better…

Soon, Pat’s small shell of a building became crowded every weekend, so he decided to enlarge it. He put up a much larger restaurant on his farm that sat 100+ people. Within a couple of years, he out grew that restaurant as well.

He finally decided to open a restaurant closer to the nearest city of Utica, New York. It became a smash hit as well. The local business owner’s association named Pat "The Entrepreneur of the Year."

Pat has long since been out of debt and now has more money than he knows what to do with. If you are ever in the Utica area, stop in to see him at Piggy Pat’s BBQ and tell him I said "Hi".

I knew that everything that happened to Pat came about because he began to believe God for great things. God began to show me what could be done if people would simply present His Word correctly as I had done with Pat.

About 18 months later, I began to have serious financial difficulties of my own. I too had been mounting up debt for years. Besides owing money on my home and cars, I had racked up credit card debt of about $140,000. Each year, I was adding tens of thousands of dollars to my debt load. Then three things happened that brought me to my knees.
First, a major coupon book company moved in to town with one main goal in mind: to put me out of business. Second, my two largest customers moved out of town. Third, the credit card companies stopped expanding my credit lines.

I had been a born again Christian since I was 15 years old, but after I became married and started my own business, I focused most of my attention on my family and my business. I prayed for an hour or so each day, but I no longer read the Bible because I thought I knew what it was all about, having spent many years reading it before.

I’m not a person who is prone to fear. You might even call me fearless, but now I began to feel fear like never before. I took the obligation of providing for my family very seriously. For the first time, it seemed I might not be able to do so. My education was limited and I couldn’t think of anything else I could do to support them. I began to pray with all my might. I begged God to show me how I could make more money.

After a week or two of praying like this, I felt as though I was hearing something deep within me. The message I faintly heard was, "You’ll find the prosperity you seek in the pages of the Bible." At first, I rejected this message. I thought "how in the world can the Bible help put money in my pocket? I don’t need spiritual riches right now, I needed cash. Besides, studying the Bible right now would only take time away from the time I need to be out there making money." So I continued to pray for money making ideas but the same message only became louder within me.

Finally, I gave up and said, "Okay LORD, I’m not only going to study the Bible, but I am going to give up my entire morning to do it." And I did. I was a late riser. I’d usually get up at 8am and go to work by 9am. But now, I began to study the Word from 9-11 and then pray for about an hour. Then I’d have lunch and go to work from 1-4:30 pm.

After several months of following this schedule, my financial situation had not changed a bit. I told my wife I had better start a coupon business somewhere else to try and supplement our income. After a great deal of thought, I decided to go to Hawaii to start a second book. I thought eventually I could run the business we had in New York in the summer, and be in Hawaii in the winter. It sounded like a good plan to me.

I continued my daily Bible studies even after going to Hawaii. Even though I had not benefited financially from my studies, I did feel richer in other ways. Best of all was the strong presence of God I felt in my life. I had a sense of divine joy and divine peace in my heart. I also felt much more connected to His divine love.

Within a few days of being in Hawaii, I studied a passage about tithing. I felt the Holy Spirit tell me to use my money to build His kingdom. He told me to send three checks of $200 each to three television Bible teachers who had been a blessing to me. Furthermore, the Spirit told me to expect and claim a hundredfold return. Just as a physical seed goes from planting to harvest in about three months, He told me to expect a hundredfold return within 90 days. This would be about three times my normal income during that 90 day period.

Now I didn’t have $600 to spare. I was already some $140,000 in debt with my credit cards, and now even more with the money I had to borrow to get to Hawaii. I even had to borrow the $600 I sent to the television pastors.

While I was in Hawaii, my wife was running our business in New York. Every night when I called home, I’d ask how the business went that day. The day after I mailed the checks to the ministers, my wife said there was someone from a local school that called her that day who wanted 250 books to sell as a fundraiser. I thought that was odd because I had tried to get that school to sell our books for over ten years without any success. Now that I’m 6,000 miles away, they come looking for a lot of books. The next day she had a similar story about another school we had never done business with. In fact, things like this began to happen almost everyday.

After a couple of weeks of miracles, my wife called me to tell me we had run out of books. I didn’t believe her. We usually had thousands of books left over each year. She said she was out of books, yet fundraising groups were continuing to call and ask for more. I told her I didn’t want to print anymore. She asked me if she could print more books with her personal money and pocket the profit. I told her "Yes" and so she printed 1,000 more and sold them all like hotcakes.

Within 90 days, I had received a hundredfold return on my investment into God’s kingdom. Instead of my income going down that year, as I had feared it would, it actually doubled. Now that is amazing considering I was only working a few hours in the afternoons, plus the fact that I wasn’t selling any books for the month I was in Hawaii.

I knew I was prospering because of God’s Word. I began to tell others what He had done for me, but no one believed me. People seemed to think I just got lucky. So, I went back to God and told Him how no one believed me. I asked Him for a confirmation by saying, "To prove that I was financially blessed by putting Your Word first in my life, please double my income again this next year." The miracles continued to roll in and sure enough, when I tallied the next year’s profits, they had once again doubled.

Now I was making four times what I used to make while still only working half days. I was driving bigger cars, bigger boats and taking bigger vacations. The prosperity I was experiencing was becoming visible to the people around me. Finally, people started to believe me.

My dad ran a local Catholic organization. He asked me if I would teach a group of his leaders about what had happened to me and my friend, Pat. I was elated to do it. I put a seven week mini-course together that covered much of what I had learned.

My dad had assembled about a dozen people who were interested in learning how God could prosper them. One person that stands out in my mind was a woman named Dr. Patricia Laino. She had a PhD in business management. She had a business that taught people how to start and succeed in their own business. She was the area’s expert on business. She even had a weekly column in the local paper on how to be successful in business. Her Entrepreneur Center had been in business for ten years at this point.

Within one year of taking my little seven week course, Dr. Laino told me her business had quadrupled as a result of what she learned from the Bible. In fact, she told me she learned more about what it takes to be successful from the Bible than she did from all her years in secular schools. She strongly encouraged me to expand the Bible course and to take it to the world.

After seeing her phenomenal success, I began to do just that. I expanded the course to be a six month course and then I took out an ad in the local newspaper to advertise my course. At this point, I began to charge $70/month for the course. Charging for the course was a great move. Now, instead of only one or two people in each group experiencing miraculous results, nearly everyone in the group did. I was doing the people in the group a favor by charging them. When you give something to someone for free, they tend not to value it. When they have to pay for something, they make sure they get their money’s worth out of it.

Bob Jones wasn’t a born again believer when he became one of my Bible students. He came because he was desperate financially. His wife told him he better make more money or she was leaving him. He did end up doubling his income as many other students had done. I will never forget when he said to me, "Larry, I came here to find material wealth. I found what I came here for and so much more. Best of all is the intimate relationship I now have with the LORD since being born again. Money is the least of the riches I have acquired."

During that semester, Bob and his wife had their first child together. Their son was born with deformed legs. All the doctors agreed that he would never walk properly. They put the newborn into an ambulance to rush him to another hospital that specialized in deformed legs. Doctors were standing by to perform surgery. Bob prayed over his son in the ambulance. He had a great deal of faith in him because he had been meditating on God’s Word each day for months. He prayed the prayer of faith over his son, believing God would heal him. When they arrived at the hospital, his son was rushed into the surgery room. The leading doctor examined the boy’s legs and found nothing wrong with them. He took x-rays and compared them with the x-rays sent over by the other hospital. He told Bob, "I have never witnessed anything like this. This is truly a miracle. The deformity that is clearly visible in the first x-rays taken has somehow corrected itself between that hospital and this one. It’s truly a miracle."

We had another woman named Michelle who had been diagnosed to have terminal cancer. At the end of our course, all the students prayed over her to be healed. The next time she went to the doctor, all traces of the cancer had left her body. She has since become a minister of the Gospel and regularly proclaims to all how God is a God of healing.

Please allow me to share with you a few more testimonies. The first is Mike and Patty Despirto. After the first week of meditating on God’s Word, Patty told how she had been able to sleep through every night that week. Previous to this, she had always woken up around 2am and wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep until after 5am. She remained a sound sleeper every night until the course was over some 18 months later.

During the course, both Mike and Patty became born again Christians. This rejuvenated their 15 year marriage that was teetering on divorce when they joined the Bible Study. Because of what JESUS did in their hearts, they fell in love all over again.

When they first came, I asked them what their #1 hearts desire was. They said, without hesitation, that it was to have a baby together. They had been trying for over a decade, but without success. They had been to doctors, fertility experts, and even priests, but all to no avail. I showed them the Scriptures where God promises those who serve Him wholeheartedly, will have children of their own.

After a few months, Patty began to lose some weight. She had tried to lose weight before, but now it was effortless for her. Within a few months, she had lost all 30 unwanted pounds. For the first time as an adult, she was at her perfect weight.

And then one day it hit her. Satan had been keeping her and her husband from having a child. They began rebuking Satan and claiming a child. Within 10 days, she realized she was pregnant. It took 9 months of meditating in God’s Word everyday to have enough faith to believe for a child. Everyday now, they enjoy that miracle child.

I’d like to also tell you about John Cowen. John had no formal education. He was a high school drop out who became a drug addict living on the streets. He eventually found his way to The Rescue Mission Center. There he was lead to the LORD. He sobered up and they helped him find a job as a telephone sales representative at a fiber optics company. John was put in charge of the dead accounts. If a customer went six months without placing an order, John was supposed to try and resurrect that account. He had been working at that job for about six months when I met him and invited him to our Bible School. Each week, his company would give him a printout of how much he had sold during the previous week. He, in fact, had the sheet with him at his first Bible Class. He had sold about $4,800 worth of fiber optics that week, which was about normal for him.

After just one week of meditating on God’s Word each day, John’s sales topped $25,000. His previous record was around $6,000. John’s company was rather large with 126 sales reps on the phone. The president of the company was so impressed, he made a personal visit to meet John and find out how he did it. I’m not sure what John told him, but the next week, John’s sales were over $20,000. Again the president visited him and this time he gave John a promotion. John’s sales continued at this pace week after week. Within two months, he had received two raises and two promotions. His income had doubled within two months. But there is more…

During the third month of John being a Bible student, one of the salesmen at John’s company turned over a dead account to him. It was a woman who worked for a division of Sprint. When John called her, something just seemed to click between them. She said she wanted to place a large order with John’s company. John asked her if she wanted to give this order to her regular sales rep but she said, "No. I feel I am supposed to give it to you." She gave John an order for $125,000 worth of fiber optics. It was the largest single order the company had ever received. The president visited John again and this time he gave him the #1 sales reps office. John went from the bottom of the company to the top, surpassing 125 other sales reps, within three months. Amazing, isn’t it?

I wish I could end this story by saying John lived happily ever after, but I can’t. During all this time, John was regularly being counseled by the gentleman who led him to the LORD at The Rescue Mission. Each week, this counselor would counsel John to get out of our Bible School. He said that the "Prosperity Gospel" was not Biblical, and that we were heretics.

John ultimately did drop out of our school. Within weeks, his sales were back to where they used to be, around $5,000 weekly. He eventually lost all his raises and promotions. After he stopped meditating on God’s Word and no longer had fellowship with faith-filled believers, John’s income returned to what it had been before he joined our Bible School.

I love sharing testimonials about what I have witnessed God doing, so may I continue with a couple more testimonies? I met this young black man who lived in the ghetto area of our town who wanted me to start holding meetings in his home. I agreed. While there I met a black man 30 years of age named James, whose IQ was only about 80. James was borderline retarded. He had no education. He couldn’t even drive a car and he lived on welfare. In the summer time, James mowed this one lady’s lawn to make a couple extra bucks. I told James that God wanted to prosper him, and that God would do so if he would meditate on God’s Word each day. James was skeptical but decided to give it a try.

A few days later, James took out his lawn mower to cut his neighbors lawn for a few bucks. After doing so, he decided to push the lawn mower a few blocks to refill the gas tank at the local service station. As he was pushing the lawn mower down the sidewalk, a man came out of his house and asked James if he’d like to make a quick $10 by mowing his tiny front yard that would only take ten minutes. James was thrilled and mowed the man’s yard.

As James continued, another man with a larger yard approached James and offered him $15 to mow his lawn that would only take 15 minutes to mow. James again was delighted and did the work.

On the way back from the service station, a restaurant owner saw James pushing his lawn mower and asked James if he would mow his small strip of grass. James agreed and was paid $20.

In a space of about 45 minutes, James was paid $45. He had never been paid that much in a day. James couldn’t wait to share his story with our group that week.

I learned a valuable lesson as well. If God can prosper James, He can prosper anyone.

More recently I met a girl named Sarah from Africa on an online dating service. When I told her about my online Bible Lessons, she signed up for them. She enjoyed them so much that she began to share them with others whom she began meeting with every week. The group started out with four people and soon grew to six, then ten and then twelve, including the pastor from her church.

One day two young black Muslims came to the meeting in order to make fun of Christianity. Instead what they heard was the Gospel proclaimed in a way they had never heard it before. They both accepted JESUS as their Savior and their LORD.

The group has grown and grown and become very large. Sarah formed three ministries out of that group. If my memory serves me, I believe one was to minister to children who live on the streets; another was for poor families; and another for elderly shut-ins. This town in Africa has been transformed because of this Bible Study program that you have in your hands.

How do you think God wants you to use it to transform your life and the lives of others?

Hopefully someday your testimony will appear here. Wouldn’t that be great???