Sid Roth

SID:  Hello, Sid Roth, your investigative reporter here with Tom and Ginny Hauser. Tom, give me a break, you’re making a quarter of a million dollars a year, you’re a nuclear engineer, you have it made, Ginny I guess you’re kind of happy with his career… 

GINNY:  Oh yes. 

SID:  And then one day he gets this thing in his head Ginny that he wants to leave his job and go into ministry. How did you get that in your head? 

TOM:  Well it was a journey; it really has been a journey. We got saved back in about 1974, my wife got saved first, and the Lord brought me into the kingdom, I call it be the two by four method. Our daughter had been sick, I thought I was saved, I had been raised in a Methodist denomination, when our daughter got sick, all of my scientist background, I had really made science an idol, rationalization… 

SID:  Now I find engineers are very difficult to believe in the invisible world as a people group. When someone is next to me on an airplane and they say they’re n engineer I say, oh brother! 

TOM:  That’s what happened to me, my wife came home and she said I got saved, and I argued with her and I said you’ve been a good Catholic girl, you’ve been saved, you know what are you talking about. Well, our daughter got sick, and at nine months they put her in the hospital. And we had a Jewish doctor, Doctor Nichman, and they had tried everything to find out what was wrong with her intestinal disorder, and they essentially gave up, they had tried all the testing, they had her on intravenous feeding. My wife got home and said we’re going to a healing service and we are going to trust that Jesus will heal her. 

SID:  Did you believe it’s possible? 

TOM:  No. 

SID:  I know you didn’t Tom. Give me a break, a nuclear engineer. 

TOM:  And I walked into the hospital room after Doctor Nichman had told us basically they had given up, my wife walked in with me and my daughter was essentially tied down because they had been I-V feeding her and she wanted to pull it out of her head, and I had the closest thing to a nervous breakdown. I said I’ve got to leave, I drove home in tears, we lived in the woods in upstate New York, I was working on a nuclear site for the fast attack submarine service at that point. And I said to God in anguish of my soul, I said, I’ve heard all my life from my mother that you are a God who does all these good things, if you even exist, heal my daughter. And if you will, then I’ll talk to you.   Well… 

SID:  Big of you to be so gracious with the creator of the universe. 

TOM:  Yeah, it was pretty arrogant, now I, oh my Lord.  Well about a week later my wife came home and said we’re going to a healing service. There was a Baptist pastor named Reverend Floyd Baker. He had been Hells Angel, got converted, he looked like a Hells Angel in a suit, right.   We go to this open-air park at upstate New York in Schenectady, and he’s giving words of knowledge. And I’m thinking man, this is a scam, this just can’t be true you know, I don’t even know what these are, and all of a sudden he points, he stops in the middle of his sermon and he points to the bleachers where I’m sitting in the back with my wife and said there’s a couple praying for a young child, and that child is being healed of an intestinal disorder right now. And I said, man, I think I said to my wife, did you tell him. 

GINNY:  He did, he did. But I didn’t. 

TOM:  And she gets on her knees worshipping Christ, and I’m like, my left-brain is going tilt.   

SID:  I understand. 

TOM:  And so at that point we went to Doctor Nichman, I think he thought we were very stressed. My wife explained to the Jewish doctor that Jesus had just healed our baby.   And so we took the baby, my wife a great woman of faith, the doctor had given me all these prescription things, you know that I was supposed to buy, and I bought a hundred dollars worth of banana flakes, Pedialyte®, mineral substitutes, be careful he’s warning. She gets home and says, don’t worry about that stuff, Jesus has healed the baby, puts the baby in a high chair, puts the finger food, and little Sarah ate I don’t know how many meals in that one sitting. About a week later, she’s still well, and she is gaining weight. And at that point I took a walk in the woods after the doctor said, well whatever is going on here, I don’t know how to explain it, keep doing what you’re doing. And I took a walk… 

SID:  But wait a second. How in the world did you know to believe like that? You’re a baby believer in God yourself. 

GINNY:  I had, I had no other choice.   I just was a desperate mom and I wanted for my child, and I said, you know I had just gotten save, started to believe that the Lord was real, he wasn’t just someone you prayed to and you are doing a good deed or something, so I said we are going to believe this and see if that is really real.    

SID:  I know, but you have a Tom, a doubting Tom over here. 

GINNY:  Well we believe in complete opposites you see. And I said lets just trust God for it. 

SID:  Okay. 

GINNY:  And we did. 

SID:  So Tom, you go out in the woods… 

TOM:  I go out in the woods and say, okay, so you are real, I don’t like your methods, I don’t like it at all. So that’s what I tell people now. I’m one of those guys, a two by four. There is a pastor I tell this joke once in a while. There is a pastor, an old pastor who had a horse and he loved this horse, and he’s given this horse away to another one, and he says I just have one criteria; you need to love this horse and treat him well. So the young man says I can do that, so he gets up on the horse and says giddy-up and the horse doesn’t go anywhere. So the old pastor picks up a two-by-four, whacks the horse on the side of the head and says now go.  And the young man says I thought you said be nice to him, and he says, I am, I’m just getting his attention. 

SID:  Okay. 

TOM:  So God got my attention.

SID:  And? 

TOM:  At that point I really surrendered. I said all right I give up, I don’t understand it, I’m willing to check my rationalism, all my science stuff, I’ve made an idol out of science, you’ve obviously done something here I don’t understand. I want more. And at that point, a week later, I think my wife invited a young man, one of the men from our church who had been in this guitar mass who had led my wife to the Lord, he came over and says, why don’t you just give up and why don’t you surrender, you’ll go free. How do I do that? There’s got to be a plan, there’s got to be a model, I’m a man of models and all that. He led me to Christ and within one minute I got the gift of tongues. And I didn’t really understand al of what that was, there’s been a lot of controversy with it… 

SID:  Well you know what happened you had what was known as a, you’ve heard of heart bypass, he had a mind bypass. He started speaking a language that he had never been trained. This can’t happen to an engineer, but it did. Don’t go away, we’ll be right back. 

SID:  Hello, Sid Roth your investigative reporter.  We’re having so much fun here I almost missed the break when we came back. My guest is Tommy Tenney and we are experiencing the supernatural of God. Tommy Tenney is about ready to have a major Hollywood motion picture be released on the life of Esther. Tommy, as we discussed earlier, you’ve studied Esther, you’ve loved the book of Esther for many years, but there was a point in your life when there was a reality that there was something in Esther that you must use for the world. When did it hit you? 

TOMMY:  Well, I was teaching people about the presence of God, and just as a momentary illustration it popped in my mind that just as Esther prepared for twelve months, she soaked six months in oil of myrrh, six months in other spices. Twelve month of preparation for one date with the king.  But one night with the king changed everything.  It changed her destiny, saved her people; brought favor. You have to be ready when it’s your turn.  Favor is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. What if Esther had said, “I don’t like myrrh, I want to wear frankincense”?  And the king may have been allergic to frankincense.   There’s a protocol… 

SID:  All of history would have been changed… 

TOMMY:  That’s right.  There’s a protocol, there’s a way. And there’s is little clue in Esther chapter two, verse fifteen. I write about it in the book that we’re talking about, that Esther listened to the chamberlain.  The king’s chamberlain told her it says very plainly, she only wore what the chamberlain appointed for her to wear.   That tells me other young girls wore what they want, said what they want. But Esther said, “Look, here’s a guy who has been in the inner chambers, he knows the king better than me.  You tell me what to wear.”  That was one of Esther’s secrets. 

SID:  Now when you made that statement in that church, the line from Esther, “One night with the king,” what happened? 

TOMMY:  I’ve written 600 pages about Esther since then, two fiction books, a children’s fiction book, an adult fiction book, a teaching book, and all the revelation of those 600 plus pages was contained in that one little nugget, it just unfolded like a flower. 

SID:  And what does one night with the king mean to our viewers? 

TOMMY:  One night with the king can change everything.  And it’s about, if the king likes you it doesn’t matter who dislikes you. So I’ve been teaching people about the Esther anointing, it’s a good way to put it; how to find favor with the king. Everybody understands we need favor in our homes, favor with our children, favor on our job; favor in our finances.  We need favor.  Favor!  Oh I love this, Sid.  Favor can restore in a day what was stolen over a lifetime.    

SID:  It’s too good, you’ve got to say that again, Tommy. 

TOMMY:  That’s some of the little…what I did is when I started studying Esther. I pulled out all the little truths that I thought…okay; she had to have learned this: And I called them protocols, protocols of the palace, protocols of the king’s presence, and that’s one of them; is that favor can restore in a day what was stolen over a lifetime.   They had been a disenfranchised people; the Jews were carried captive into Babylon. Babylon was taken over by Persia, second-class citizens, so to speak, but it doesn’t matter.   By the time the day of favor is finished, not only Esther is in a place of favor, but her adopted father, Mordecai and all the Jewish nation. They are in an incredible place of favor.  Favor can restore in one day what was stolen over a lifetime.  But you have to find favor with the king. 

SID:  You know, I found it extremely fascinating when you revealed this historical truth in your book that Adolph Hitler banned the book of Esther for obvious reasons; he didn’t want favor on the Jewish people, but I believe… 

TOMMY:  He didn’t want the knowledge of what could happen. 

SID:  Yes, but I believe that there is like a spiritual scale over the eyes of most Christianity that they have to understand the mysteries from the book of Esther. How, why, this motion picture, this Hollywood motion picture? 

TOMMY:  It’s interesting you said mysteries.  The book of Esther is the only book of the Bible that the name of God is not mentioned.  And suddenly it dawned on me, that although His name is not mentioned, His works are evident.   So, it’s like God steps back and works behind the scenes and He gives us a view of how that happens. Same thing that Jesus did; whenever Jesus wanted to reveal a truth, Sid, He would conceal that truth in a story, and we call it the parables. I took the same concept, wrote it into the fiction book, it became a movie, and no, this is not a come to Jesus movie. This is a tell the story…Sid, when is the last time you went to a movie and at the end of the movie they said,  “Everybody bow your head, raise your hands, whose going to commit adultery this week, whose going to harbor hate in their hearts.” 

SID:  It’s not done. 

TOMMY:  They don’t do that.  But they tell the stories and it moves the cultural value markers.   And any battlefield we abandon, we loose by default.   So, I’m just telling the story, with the values of a hero who stayed faithful, who learned protocol. And it’s about an earthly king, but it points to the heavenly king. 

SID:  Is that the purpose, really? 

TOMMY:  That’s the purpose. 

SID:  Who’s in the movie? 

TOMMY:  Peter O’toole, Omar Sharif… 

SID:  I’ll tell you what; I believe there is such a presence of God especially on the music by Tommy’s wife, that as you hear this music, backs are going to be healed, people that are hurting are going to stop hurting, and literally, those tears may come for an evening, but I promise you joy will come in the morning and many of you will have encounters with Jesus. Let’s go out with that clip on the movie, “One Night With The King.” 

SID:  Hello, Sid Roth your investigative reporter here with Tommy Tenney. Just before the break Tommy, he was saying it was not a formula; you were saying it’s a relationship. In other words you can’t say ABC and you will have favor with God. You can say ABC to have a relationship. These are some of the things that God is looking for. Tell me how we can have this relationship?

TOMMY:  It’s like; you know this is a little program thing of what you and I are talking about. If everything in a marriage I have to write down, and you have to check list every morning: Kiss my wife at the door; make sure of a phone call,

SID:  Flowers for her birthday…

TOMMY:  Yeah, if it’s that regimented, it’s a ritual and not a relationship. And God refuses…

SID:  Aren’t humans subject to ritual. Don’t we love tradition?

TOMMY:  Yes.  We do.

SID:  Of course we Jewish people have the corner on the market, but you Christians have taken it a step further than us, I think

TOMMY:  Well, we love our traditions.  It’s like you’re in church and at a particular moment, they sing a song. It could have been a year ago, ten years ago, and you love that song. The next Sunday you maybe send a note and say sing that song again. Now, I understand, and the worship leader probably understands too, it’s not the song. It’s, you want that song to take you to the same place it previously took you.   But I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Sid, you can sing the same song, but it may not take you to the same place. It’s as if God moves the door on you.  Usually behind us sometimes, there’s draperies, like at a hotel; you can’t find the opening. You have to run your fingers across the pleat of the veil, until you find the opening. And God moves that door on you so that relationship does not deteriorate into ritual; that you have to feel after Him every time. That’s why women think men are unpredictable to some degree; men think women are unpredictable. That’s the magic of a relationship. And with God it’s the same.

SID:  Now, I know you’ve been studying, like myself the book of Esther for years, it’s one of my favorite books.  But when did it dawn on you that there’s a correlation between favor and Esther.

TOMMY:  Okay.  Looking for the equation, looking for what’s really not there. Esther found incredible favor in a hostile environment.  Sid, Esther was an orphan.  That means the deck was stacked against her. She was not only an orphan; she was a foster child. Everybody knows foster children don’t have half a chance. She was a minority; she was a Jew living in Persia. And in case our viewers don’t understand, that’s ancient Iraq and Iran, and the same prejudices that exist today, existed then.  For a Jewish lady to become queen of Persia, it’s unprecedented.   But she rose above all those obstacles.  Somewhere between 400 and 1400 other young girls were brought into the palace.  How did she get picked? What happened to create that moment of favor? And I thought if I study how Esther operated, maybe I’d figure my wife out a little better; maybe I can figure out this whole thing with God. And I found out that she is an incredible, incredible lady. And I’ve been studying…the word favor is the repetitive word in the book of Esther, it’s found in virtually every chapter. And it’s how a peasant girl was plucked up off of a farm, so to speak, placed into a palace, into an unfamiliar environment, learned, and here is the key:  she learned the protocols of the palace. She learned how to act in the king’s presence, where to walk, where not to walk, what to do. And then rose above all that; the Bible says in Esther 2:17, the king loved Esther above all the women, so that he placed the royal crown on her head.  There came a day, now I do feel the anointing about this, there came a day, where Esther walked into the palace a peasant, and she had one encounter with the king, and walked out queen. Never underestimate the potential of one encounter.  One night with the king can change everything.

SID:  And here people are focused on their problems, because their problems for some it’s health, life threatening, it’s marriage, it’s children and drugs.

TOMMY:  Here’s the secret about that:  One of the most freeing statements that I’ve ever discovered I learned from studying the book of Esther. Sid, people that are watching, you don’t need everybody to like you. I want that to sink in.

SID:  Say it again.

TOMMY:  You don’t need everybody to like you.  Your boss may say it’s over

SID: It’s normally not in the five-point sermon “You don’t need everybody to like you…”

TOMMY:  But listen, your boss may say it’s over, your spouse may say we’re through; your doctor may say I’ve done all I know how to do, but one nod from God. What if God were to look your direction and just do this.  One nod from God is worth more that an arena’s applause from mankind. You don’t need everybody to like you, but in terms of what we are talking about with Esther, if the king likes you, it doesn’t matter who dislikes you. They cannot control your destiny.

SID:  But one thing can control your destiny.  One nod from God can change the impossible to “How come I couldn’t believe it before?  It’s easy when God gives me favor.  We’ll be back right after this, and there is a presence of God on Tommy’s wife’s singing from the brand new movie about Esther.  We’re going to show a clip from it.  We’ll be back just a moment; don’t go away. You’re about ready to experience the supernatural.

SID:  Hello, Sid Roth your investigative reporter here with Tommy Tenney and this is unlike any television show you’ve ever seen because it’s interactive. What do I mean by interactive?  Normally you are used to sitting back on your couch and kicking off your shoes and saying “Come on, entertain me.” Well this is two-way communication, which the supernatural will literally go through your television set and people will be physically healed and physically touched by the presence of the living God. Now my guest, Tommy Tenney, I believe just as in the book of Esther, it says, “Who knows if you’ve not been called to the kingdom for such a time as this.” The reason I have him on this show is not because he has a best selling series of books “The God-Chasers.” It’s not because he is about to do a Hollywood motion picture with Peter O’Toole, on the book of Esther, it’s not because his books on the Esther series are becoming best sellers. It’s none of the above.  It’s one reason and one reason only. Somehow, someway, Tommy Tenney has touched the heart of God and where he goes he walks in supernatural favor. And I believe that if we can talk to him and pull out of him what he has learned in his adventure with God, some of you will begin walking with God in an extraordinary fashion. As a matter of fact, Tommy Tenney, if someone were to say to you, “What is the purpose of your life thus far, you would say?” 

TOMMY:  To find my assignment and fulfill it. 

SID:  And what is your assignment? 

TOMMY:  I love to teach people about the presence of God and to give them a road map of how to enter His presence, and what pleases God. 

SID:  Now, before you became a best selling author I have to believe that you experienced the presence of God and were probably teaching on it before anyone ever heard the name Tommy Tenney beyond little areas that knew it. Am I right? 

TOMMY:  Absolutely.  I have been in ministry 32 years and people only have heard about me about the past ten years and they said, “You’ve an overnight success.” 

SID:  Right. 

TOMMY:  I wanted to slap them and say, “You have no idea how long that night was.”   It really is not all about that, it is just that all of a sudden, I’m saying the same things, it’s that all of a sudden everybody wants to listen. But God puts you through school, so that you thoroughly learn what your assignment is and you stay on that theme. And God gives me particular themes to preach on and that’s what I do. And not just preach; write. 

SID:  Was there a point in your life, Tommy, where you can say there was a measurable difference in your own intimacy with God and in the favor God put in your life? 

TOMMY:  But they didn’t come together. 

SID:  Explain. 

TOMMY:  There was a sense of, it was three phases. There was a sense of incredible hunger, and ironically Sid, it was nine months of that kind of hunger.  Birthed an incredible experience to which I can.. 

SID:  Would you say that God put the desire that hunger within you, or was it an act of your will? 

TOMMY:  Oh, it was a combination of circumstances.  God does not mind sacrificing our comfort to develop our character, or point us to our assignment. And I went through nine months of a frustrating period in my life and got so desperately hungry that I really prioritized God, and all of a sudden He showed up in a way unprecedented. I had know God, I was saved been in ministry nearly twenty years at that point. 

SID:  And I know just as you are saying that, I’m like most of us can feel the presence of God. And just as you said the word unprecedented I felt the presence just zoom right up. Just as you said that, I guess just remembering what God did. 

TOMMY:  I have some interesting experiences Sid.  I’m in airports all the time. I was in London last week, and I’m sitting on an airplane and my assistant is beside me, and on the opposite side of him is, what I didn’t know then but what I now know is a professional soccer player. I’m talking to my assistant, actually he’d made a mistake, and I said, “You really can’t do that.” And this professional soccer player leans around and he says, “That voice, I know who you are, I know what you do. And I said, “Why?” And he said, “Your voice carries something.” And he was a believer.   I don’t even know about it, I have no clue, I’m just who I am.  I tell about God, I tell His stories 

SID:  But you had that hunger.  But tell me the time that it just increased? The power where people sensed it, where you just had that favor with God? 

TOMMY:  Well, after hunger comes an encounter. If you handle the encounter properly, comes favor. And that’s what happened in my life. I tell people, you know, we talk about my past. If I knew what created the favor, I would have pushed those buttons twenty years earlier. 

SID:  Of course. 

TOMMY:  But it’s not about me, so the fact that is not about how smart I am… 

SID:  You know what?  I believe that if you had pushed those buttons twenty years earlier, you might have failed the test. 

TOMMY:  That’s right. 

SID:  You needed the gray hair and the experiences… 

TOMMY:  Well, experience births humility because you realize you are not the one who created or caused that moment. I had an incredible encounter with God.  And everything in my life, it’s now, instead of shouting and people still not listening, I can speak quietly and, people listen. 

SID:  Tell me, when this was, and if you have any ideal of the ingredients that caused it? 

TOMMY:  Sid, I would be remiss to sit here and tell you there is a formula, there is not. It is not about an equation, it is about a relationship.  If I have to enumerate; if I have to

SID:  I’ll tell you what, hold that thought. We’ll be back in just a moment but he is going to tell you how you can have intimacy with God, favor with God.  We’ll be right back after this.