Root: You were very close with the “King of Pop”, Michael Jackson. Is it true that a few weeks before he died, he met with you and accepted Jesus or was that a rumor?
Andrae Crouch: Put it like this, we were getting ready to do another three songs with him at his house. On that day we talked and caught up on what was going n with him and vice versa and what was funny was he had this little cheap CD player with and he played music that he wanted me to arrange vocals for but he didn’t have any words and that was the first time that we worked with him and he didn’t have any lyrics. He started putting some words together and then I would write the next line and we did that back and forth. I then told him I could have the group back there to rehearse the songs separately because usually I was a little stand offish when we had the singers there because he would be talking to us from the booth, writing lyrics and all of that. At this point he didn’t know what the song would be but we kept writing back and forth. Michael then said to me “You wanna know why I love you and Sandra so much?’ and I said Why? He said, “Because I trust you guys and I love you”. He then wanted to set up a time where we can bring the singers to learn the song but he couldn’t get the words together so he brought his kids to the room where we were and he told them “This is the guy that arranged the songs that you guys like” and he told the children, “I love them”. He went on to say how much he loved us because he never heard anything about us saying negative stuff about him. What was really interesting was as we were talking he said, “Andrae, there are some things I wanted to ask you” and he said “When I see you on TV and you are singing and your hands are up in the air, is that called the anointing?” I said where did you hear that word? He said he didn’t know but when he sees it, it seems like when you do that, the power falls down, he said it’s very powerful. I was wondering where he learned that because I knew he had never been to a Pentecostal church. We talked for many hours and my sister Sandra said, “Michael, we feel like you are our son” and he said that he felt the same way so Sandra asked if we could pray for him and he said yes. We all got in a circle and began praying and he squeezed my hand so tight that it was hurting. We began praying and we said, “Lord, we want you to change Michael’s life and he prayed everything that we said. I know that he accepted the Lord.
Root: How long was this before he passed away.
Andrae Crouch: It was one week. God is so merciful. He had no problems with us praying with him and he had both of his hands up. There is no doubt in my mind that he did accept the Lord. We had the choir there and he would normally be isolated from everyone but this particular time he stood right in the middle of us all.
Root: Isn’t it amazing how God used you to reach someone like Michael Jackson?
Andrae Crouch: Yes it is. In fact I used to hear that most of the people who worked with him were Muslims but at the funeral he had a Pentecostal guy conduct the funeral. I actually set next to Quincy Jones and Gladys Knight. It still amazes me because at the rehearsal before he passed, he stood right there in the middle of us all and talked about the tour and how the stage was going to be built and what it would look like. But in the same breath he said, “I don’t wanna go on this tour, I just don’t feel right about it”. That’s what he said. He kinda knew that something was going on but he didn’t know what. I know he is with the Lord because he was so ready. When we did the song “Man in the mirror”, we would do a warm up song called “It won’t be long” and every time we got together he told me that he always would sing that song to himself and he asked if we could sing that song for him and I said “Sure”. He loved that song and he was so gentle and I praise God for the work that he did in his life before he went to be with the Lord.
