A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE CALLING OF
BROTHER O'KEEFE

As a boy in my early teens I had on several occasions gone to different churches when some friend invited me. On two different occasions, I actually went to an altar to repent, but I never followed through with the things that I promised God. I never stayed repented more than three days before returning to my old ways.

My life consisted of fighting, cursing, stealing, and general meanness. When I was sixteen years old I ran with a gang. We drank alcohol whenever we could get it, and one night I was in a car with five other guys. We had all been drinking, but I guess that I was the drunkest of all of them. Strangely enough, instead of acting foolish, I became very serious about life, about what we were doing, and where we were going. I was sick of the way that I was living and ashamed of what I was. And as I thought about these things it came to me that Jesus Christ was the only good and holy thing that I had ever known. I guess that I was drunk enough that my inhibitions were suppressed. I began talking to the guys in the car about Jesus Christ. In a few minutes I was crying and preaching. It wasn't long before all of the guys were crying. I was sincerely pouring out my heart in an effort to express to my friends the goodness of God's love. I preached about Calvary, about the blood, and his mercy. I told them that Jesus was the only hope, the only Savior.

The next day, all of the guys that had been in the car were teasing me and calling me "the preacher". To them it had just been liquor talking, but I could not shake off what I had felt. The liquor was gone, and I was now sober, but the message that I had preached still meant something to me, even if it didn't to the other guys.

The next day was Saturday, so, a friend and I went to the Uptown Theater on McDonald Blvd. in Richmond, CA. I didn't get anything out of the movies, and still felt impacted by what had happened the night before. As my friend and I left the theater and began walking home we took a short cut through a large park called Nichol Park. We were about half way through this park when I suddenly had a vision. I was walking. I was wide awake. I was completely sober.

In this vision I saw a multitude of black faces, and all of them were crying with tears of love and gratitude, and through their tears their faces shone with an inexpressible joy. Their hands were lifted toward God and their voices were filled with praise. They were worshipping God. They had been touched by a holy hand and found mercy, hope, and salvation. Suddenly, there was a voice that spoke to me and said, “If you will give your life to me, I will bring to pass the beauty that you have seen in this vision.”

At that time, I did not understand the vision, nor did I understand how to give my life to God, but I did understand that my purpose in life could only be fulfilled in fully serving Jesus Christ.

It was several years later before I heard about something called the New Birth. I had never heard about receiving the Holy Ghost. I did not even know about being baptized in Jesus' name. I had never considered the doctrine of the trinity, nor the doctrine of the Oneness of God. I knew very little about God, but I did know that there was a God, and I knew that what Jesus gave at Calvary was worth dedicating my life to.

On November 2, 1958, I went to a Pentecostal altar to surrender my life. I knew that in surrendering my life that God was going to take me back to the vision he had given me in “Nichol Park.” When I said yes to repentance, I knew that my repentance had to include a surrender to whatever the vision required. I had come to the place that I understood that God was calling me to preach. That day I accepted his call on my life.

It was many years later, years of helping to establish the church in Bay Point, and then founding a church in Antioch, and then receiving an appointment to serve as a foreign missionary in Africa, before the vision was fulfilled. It was Sierra Leone, West Africa, that I felt and saw the fulfillment of the vision. In twenty years there, we saw 18,000 people receive the Holy Ghost, and be baptized in Jesus' name. That was an average of 2 1/2 people receiving the Holy Ghost and being baptized every day for twenty years. We were able to build fifty four churches, and start a Bible college to train men for the ministry.

I still remember when we dedicated the new headquarters church. It would hold about one thousand people. I remember the shouting, and the weeping, the victory marches, the uplifted hands, and I remember, as I looked over the crowd that day, that God had fulfilled the vision. God brought to pass the beauty that he had shown a sixteen year old boy walking through Nichol Park in Richmond, California.