Sid Roth

SID: You know, this is real life. This is not fiction. This is not wearing a cloak and looking so good on the outside. These two people, Bob and Audrey Meisner, are being transparent with you to help you so they will make a difference in your life. So Audrey finds out from the affair that she had, she has a baby. The baby is biracial. There’s no way to cover this up. She goes to Bob. Bob, what did you think?

BOB: I wanted to escape. I wanted to get out. But the counsel that I got from my pastor was this. Because I wanted to sleep on that couch that very first night, I wanted to go to a hotel, I wanted to leave, and he says, no, you’re going to get right back into your marriage bed tonight. You will not spend night apart from each other, because we will not participate with the spirit of divorce. That’s hard, but you see, that’s my father’s heart. We resigned our positions from pastoring from the television ministry, and we went to a place of safety to get help for our family. God supernaturally provided for us in ways of work and in the ways of home, because I didn’t know if we would ever be happy again a day in our lives. But I knew that divorce was not the answer.

SID: But wait a second. You move from one country, Canada, to the United States. You have no job. How much  money did you have?

BOB: Not too much money.

SID: You have a pregnant wife, three children.

BOB: Yes.

SID: I mean, you are really like Abraham, going into new land.

BOB: I was willing to fight for my family. You see, when you want to step in the supernatural, you need to embrace the truth of God. You see, God has a preferred future for my life, for my marriage, for my wife and for my children, and divorce was not the answer. I needed the heart of God for my wife.

SID: Now what did you do with the child your wife was carrying, knowing the child was biracial. That must have been tough.

BOB: The biggest question that I had was this, would I believe to love this baby as my own. I know what it’s like to have a small child crawl up your leg and look into your eyes and say, “daddy”, and I knew what my heart was, and it was not your daddy. There was a transformation that was required by me. I knew that our love for each other, you know, our natural love had waned. It wasn’t sufficient to take us to where we needed to be. We needed God’s supernatural love. He transformed my heart by me knowing how much He loved me. We went through months of difficulty, good days, bad days, and some were better than others.

SID: Audrey, did you consider an abortion? I guess not, because you were raised as a Christian.

AUDREY: You know, Sid, there’s nothing I believe about abortion. When you’re that desperate, I was so desperate, Sid. I had been a Jesus girl, I had been in ministry. Now my kids are going to be messed up. I’m going to be disqualified. I’m going to be known for the most stupid and selfish thing I have ever done. And I remember exactly where I was in my kitchen when my made that phone call to the abortion clinic. And they said, you don’t even have to come in. We’ll just send you 10 pills in the mail, and just take one pill every week and your problem will be over. And I hung up the phone, and I said, “I don’t know if that’s the answer, but I can’t live through this. I can’t live through the whole idea. I’m so scared.” And I went to my knees and I said, “God, I won’t have an abortion, but I’m begging you, if you love me, you will give me a miscarriage, because I can’t carry this.” I think back now the reason I cried is because I’m so thankful that God did not answer that prayer, because what I was really praying for was God to evacuate me out of my circumstances. But God in His love said, “Audrey, I’m going to walk with you through every moment.”

SID: Bob, how in the world did you tell your three children? What were their ages? What happened.

BOB: 15, 13 and 10 years old. We just had a family meeting.

AUDREY: We were scared. We were so scared.

SID: I’m sure.

BOB: They walked in seeing their parents sitting on the floor crying. I immediately got up and I pulled a large queen-size blanket from the bed. With Audrey seated on the floor, I took this blanket and I covered her from head to foot. I knelt down beside her and I wrapped my arms around her, and I looked deep into my children’s eyes, and I said, “Kids, this is what God does when we make a mistake. He comes to us, He covers us, and He wraps His arms around us and He says, ‘I will never leave you, I will never forsake you.'” With Audrey covered and held in my arms, I looked into their eyes and said, “I love your mom. She’s so precious to us. I’m not going anywhere. We’re a family. We belong with each other.” And I just spoke as much security to them as I could. And with her covered and held in my arms, I said, “Kids, you’re going to have a baby brother.” Immediately, my older two began to cry, but my daughter, 13, she smiles as big anything. She looks as me and she says, “Daddy, we’re having a baby.” She sees my pain and cries, but she can’t contain her excitement. “Daddy, we’re having a baby.” I knew that we were going to be okay. And again, good months, bad months. But it was several months later that we found ourselves in the hospital. It was time for this little boy to be born.

SID: Now what did you name this little boy, Robert, what did you name him?

BOB: I gave him my name, Robert. His middle name is Theodore, and Theodore means “divine gift”.

SID: Is he gift?

BOB: He’s not accident. He’s not a mistake. He’s not the result of a sexual affair. He’s born out of the heart of God just as my other three children, and entrusted into me. He is the greatest gift, one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received.

SID: Audrey, tell me about your son, Robert.

AUDREY: Oh he’s just brought so much joy to our home. And I think back, and all the lies the enemy told me about our kids being messed and that we would never laugh again or dream again, all those were because of just the power of what Jesus really can do. Our kids all love God. Our little Robert is now 11 years old, and he’s such a piece of work. He keeps us all laughing.

BOB: I struggled with would I be able to love this baby as my own. That was my biggest one. And my pastor knew that, and I questioned him many times. And one day he came to me, because I had other people bringing confusing points. Bob, you can’t love this baby. You’re doing so good. Give this baby up for adoption, all of these types of things. And one day, I was with him and I said, what do I do? And he says, “Bob, there’s a baby on your doorstep. What do you do? Will you participate with this fatherless generation or will you become a father to the fatherless? The rest is up to you. It’s time to grow up.”

SID: Hold that thought. But this is what I observed. I am overwhelmed. I am blown out of the water of the love I see between these two. I mean, it’s nothing of the transparency I see between these two. It’s about time for there to be transparency and reality. When we come back, I’m going to ask them to give you some keys as to why they have this and why you’re going to have this. Don’t go away.

SID: Hello. Sid Roth here with Tony Kemp. And Tony, I don’t get it. I have read it’s too late for me. I’ve read the Bible. I don’t understand how someone could think, once saved, always saved. Tell me why that’s wrong.

TONY: Well first of all, Jesus said in Matthew 24, speaking to his disciples, he says, “He who endures to the end the same should be saved.” Jesus is talking to those that are his followers, his disciples, and he’s saying, you must obey me to the end of your lives, to go to Heaven and to go to glory. In addition to that, the apostle Paul, who was the great teacher of grace, said in Romans 11, he said, “Remember now, both the goodness and the severity of God on those that sinned and failed God’s severity came upon them. But God said on you with goodness, if you continue in this goodness,” meaning continue to obey the teaching of Jesus the Messiah, he said then, “If you refuse to obey the teaching of Jesus to the end of your life and you backslide,” he said, “God will cut you off.” And this is what he said, Sid. He said, if God did not spare the natural branch, take heed that God does not spare you.

SID: That’s what I was reading. I don’t understand. Unless you lift scripture out of context and do not look at all scripture, that’s the only way you can come up with that, really.

TONY: Not only that, the apostle of love, John, who wrote the Book of Revelation, God comes to John and through the person of Jesus by the spirit, and Jesus begins to talk to the church in emphasis and says, “I have something against you. You have left your first love. You’ve backslid.” He said, “Repent and do your first works again.” Then Jesus speaks to John about Sardis, and this is what he says: “You have a name that lives,” indicating at one time you were born again, you had a salvation experience. But Jesus says, “You need to remember from where you have fallen and you need to repent.” And then Jesus says this: “You have a few names of Sardis who have not defiled [unintelligible]. They shall walk with me and right.” And what Jesus is saying, is you have some people who are living a clean life, a holy life, a righteous life before me, and they’re going to glory. Then Jesus says one other thing. He says, “He who overcomes,” meaning overcomes sin, because Jesus defeated sin, “that same person will have their name in the Book of Life. But the person who surrenders to sin and does not continue to follow Jesus to the end,” he said, “I will block that person’s name out of the Book of Life.”

SID: Okay. What would you say, and I think you’ve almost answered the question, to those that say, yes, you have to repent when you’re saved. But once you do that, since Jesus already died for all of your sins you don’t have to repent any more.

TONY: Well let’s take a look at this. Because Jesus speaks, in Chapters 2 and 3 of the Book of Revelation, to the seven churches, and to five of those churches he tells them to repent. In addition to that, you have in Acts, Chapter 8, Phillip the evangelist preaching, and a sorcerer by the name of Simon gets saved. And it says there that he gets saved. Later on, Simon sees the apostles lay hands upon people and they get baptized with the Holy Spirit, and [unintelligible]. Ask the apostle Peter if you give him money, if maybe you can get this power. And he approaches Peter. And this is what Peter says to him. He says, “Your heart is not right with God in this manner.” This is what Peter says. He says, “You need to repent of the wickedness of this thought and ask God to forgive you.” In addition to that, John, the apostle of love in 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins God is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all that’s not righteous.” Now Sid, it has been said that 1 John was written to Gnostics, a people who taught false doctrine, but the letters were written to the church. John actually says, Sid, “My little children.” He said, “You spiritual fathers who know Jesus the Messiah, you young men who have the Word of God living in you, you’ve overcome the wicked one, you children, you spiritual children who know God, that’s who I’m writing to.” And so it is very clear that the Word of God teaches us, after we get saved we need to repent because repentance is the method that God uses to transform your mind and my mind so that we do the will of God in a way that’s acceptable, pleasing and honoring to him.

SID: Okay. Tony, what about someone says, are you saying to me, Tony, I have to be born again twice? Is that what you’re saying?

TONY: No, I’m not saying that. Here’s what is the truth. Jesus says to one of the churches in the Book of Revelation, “You were born again, but because you chose to sin you spiritually died.” And when a person repents they can spiritually come back to life.

SID: Some of the counterfeit grace teachers are teaching either there is no Hell or there’s something like a Purgatory, a short term Hell, and then you go to Heaven. What would you say to them?

TONY: Well I’m listening to the apostle of love, again, John, and he says in Revelation 14, and he also says in Revelation 20, “That the people who are not found in the Book of Eternal Life, those who have repented, believe and obey Jesus the Messiah, that they go to the Lake of Fire and they’re tormented there forever.”

SID: Now what is the Lake of Fire?

TONY: The Lake of Fire is Hell. It’s where everyone goes who does not obey Jesus to the end of their lives. And allow me to say this, too, Sid, I want to listen to Jesus, because Jesus said in Mark 9, and Jesus is speaking to his disciples. He said, “If a person dies in sin,” and Jesus actually says to the disciples, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. If your eye causes you to sin, cut that sin off. If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off.” Jesus said, “The person who dies in sin will go into the fire that never shall be quenched.”

SID: Why is Tony, why is he so passionate over this? Because the Bible says it. Why is he so passionate over this? Because he had a vision of the Lake of Fire. He had a vision of Hell. And I want him to tell us about that when we come back. Don’t go away.

Sid:  We want everyone everywhere to be red hot for the Messiah. By the time you’ve finish this weeks’ interview I’m going to tell you something they’ll be a paradigm change in your life.  It’s what you’ve always been after I can’t wait to get into it but my guest is Dennis Clark. Dennis and I were talking a little bit before we started this show and I want you to know a little bit about his background.  He’s watching TV one day a Christian TV show and he’s not born again, the last thing on his mind and  a preacher points his hand it’s as if it came right out of the screen it was just as if he was talking just to Dennis, and Dennis gets born again.  And he reads the Bible and he knows that this is God’s Word. He has no unusual supernatural things happen although it was very supernatural that just as TV evangelist just arrested his attention. Four months later he’s minding his own business and all of a sudden he has a vision.  No paradigm for supernatural, no one’s every told him anything about this, what did you see Dennis?

Dennis: In my minds’ eye I saw the Godhead, an understanding that was an impression on the inside.  Father, Son and Holy Spirit that I was indwelt and infused with a tremendous sense of power, then with my eyes wide open in the air in front of me were letters of living light.  Letters that I could read but when I read them I did not just read them with my mind.  My entire being was absorbing, and reading, and understanding the living words that I was seeing in front of my eyes.

Sid:  What did it say?

Dennis: It said, “Grand Book and Bible” a Christian Book Store within a mile of my house.

Sid: You don’t have to be a mental giant you get this amazing vision, you got to the book store and what happened?

Dennis: I was grabbed by the arm by one of the clerks she said “There is a man in this store that you must meet,” and took me over and the man was the author of the book that I had read, the only Christian book that I had read that four month period outside of the Bible.  And he said, “You need to go to a Christian businessman’s lunch.”

Sid:  This was what “Full Gospel Businessman.”

Dennis: Yes.

Sid: So you go to the meeting and all of a sudden you find out about being baptized in the Holy Spirit.  You receive the baptism you speak in a supernatural language; how did your life change?

Dennis: From that moment on there was always, and I mean always, a constant awareness of God’s presence.  There never was a moment that I wasn’t aware of precious cargo carrying precious cargo.  I even equated it kind of like a pregnant woman 7, 8, 9 months she has to be about her business but she will always be aware that she’s carrying precious cargo.  And the feelings never left, it was what I later come to understand of course the fruit of the Spirit the sense of His presence.

Sid:  You actually had a Spirit that had been harassing you your whole life broken off in 1976. You were afraid to even share your testimony in front of people.

Dennis: Yes.

Sid: Tell me what happened briefly.

Dennis: Well, I went and was invited because of the richness of even passing on the testimony of the open vision etcetera, they put me in front of a crowd of perhaps 40 people to share my testimony.  And for whatever reason out of the blue I’m standing on this platform and I freeze,  I mean just totally freeze. I could feel shame and it was strong and powerful and I didn’t understand it and walked right off the stage.

Sid:  You must have been even more humiliated by having to walk off the stage, you must have been a horrific experience for you.  Then what happened?

Dennis:  Absolutely, went home and then I went home and I said, “God, I’ve been called to preach, I’ve been having all these wonderful experiences what is wrong with me?”  And I knelt down by the side of a couch and I closed my eyes and it happened again. All of a sudden in my mines eyes with total clarity I saw myself at the age of perhaps nine and I was a bed wetter. I saw in my mind’s eye a young nine year old boy, me, making fists hating himself.  Hating himself that he couldn’t even control his own body. The shame was so powerful that it was my little secret nobody knew this.  And I said, “God, I knew that it was wrong to hold unforgiveness toward anybody but even myself.”  And down in my Spirit I received, this was even without words, I receive, this is even without words, “I receive forgiveness for having held such hatred for myself.”  And when I did I was flooded with the peace and all of sudden there was this thing that was on me like a slimy stocking mask, simultaneously while I felt, because I felt everything in the spirit realm as a constant, I felt it lift in my mind’s eye it was lifting off me, it was like a burglars stocking mask only it was slimy and ugly and as it came off…

Sid: You know what this reminds me it’s almost like you made an oath no one is going to ever know that I had this horrible habit and you even blocked it from yourself but you didn’t block it from your real self because it limited you from fulfilling your destiny.

Dennis:  Absolutely.

Sid:  And once it was lifted was it almost immediate that you had freedom?

Dennis: It was immediate as a matter of fact I went to a local church the next day and the first thing they said is “Dennis we want you to share your testimony.”  And the first thing I did was walked up to that pulpit and I said, “I don’t know if everyone is going to understand this but I like me,” and they all laughed about wow this guys may have some issues. I was so full of the joy of the Lord that I felt that for the first time I received myself the way God received me.

Sid: You were free.

Dennis: I was free, it was total freedom and shame and it was just like amazing that had been blocking the way.

Sid:  And the gifts of the Spirit ever since you were baptized in the Holy Spirit started flowing. Although you had a good prayer life at least you thought you had a good prayer life.  One day you are praying and you heard from God, what did He say to you?

Dennis: He said, “Ask me to teach you to pray.”  And at first I was a little stunned because I thought it was quite sufficient.  I mean I had learned everything I learned I learned in prayer and He said, “Ask me to teach you to pray.”  And so then I just humbled myself and said, “Sure, teach me how to pray.”  And then to my surprise it started immediately that day, one thought coming from the heart of God bombarding me continuously, and it must have lasted for a month.  That thought was “Dennis, I’m giving you My undivided attention.”  And every single day He never changed the subject but I like soaked in it, I absorbed it and I wanted to be a partaker of that.  And little did I know only in hindsight that rejection was being washed out of me over a period of five weeks, but in the mean time it did something else that I thought was quite amazing.  While I had never known such acceptance I had never known such affection, I had never and I’m feeling these things, they were not thoughts or concepts they were impressions that I owned and I absorbed and then as I…

Sid: These were knew feelings.

Dennis: These were totally – I never had anything like this I mean I was Dennis the Menace, there was nobody saying “Dennis you know your might constant delight and I’m giving you my undivided attention.”  But what happened was that all of a sudden by the end of the four weeks, being bombarded with so much affection, acceptance, attention I wanted to burst inside and say “God I want to reciprocate, I’ve got to, I can’t do like you God I can’t think of you every minute every hour.  I’ll try but I can’t do it like you, but oh God that I could reciprocate.” That’s when the voice came and He said, “You can, I’ve given you the equipment.”

Sid: What you know, and then for the next month God’s spoke to Dennis and taught him step by step… You know what it reminds me, when I was a young believer Dennis I got a hold of a book by Brother Lawrence and it was called “The Practice of the Presence of God.” This was written in the 1617 hundreds. It was a monk that his job in the monastery was washing dishes, but he had such communion with God that he was happier than if he had been President of the United States, well, that’s not a good analogy.  Well, leave that one alone, but people would seek him out because they knew when they would meet him they’d come and they’d come into the presence of God.  Well, I read that book and I tried to do what that book said, but it didn’t work for me, and that’s why I’m so excited about interviewing you because Dennis for the next 30 days God said to you “I’m giving you my undivided attention and I’m going to teach you how to commune with me.”