Sid Roth

Sid: My guest is Bill Johnson Senior Leader of Bethel Church in Redding, California. And I’ve had the privilege of sitting under Bill’s ministry, and I have to say I don’t know of anyone else I’ve seen that have had so many manifestations of miracles. So I wanted to find out how this happened. Well I can’t even call them normal because he’s a 5^th generation Pastor and it runs in his genes, in his DNA. But not what he experienced one night the electricity of God… Bill Johnson, did it hurt this electricity of God? I know that if lightning hits you that would hurt?

Bill:   It wasn’t painful but also was not pleasant it was very very uncomfortable. It was gratifying in the sense that I lived so aware of God being in the room, but physically it was not a pleasant experience of what I felt physically.

Sid: So this happened 3 nights in a row from about 3:00 to 6:00 AM in the morning. The third night, if I understand you right, that same presence of God went on your wife.

Bill: Yeah.

Sid: Now did she deal with it better than you?

Bill:   I don’t know the process she went through on the inside I think it was more of just an unusual encounter with the Lord. I don’t know that He had to hunt for the same thing in her heart that He had to find in mine.

Sid: And repeat for those that didn’t listen yesterday what did He basically say to you?

Bill: The Lord was looking for me to give up my right for dignity. That He wanted the right to be able to use me in any way that He wanted even if I looked foolish, even if I didn’t come across as being dignified or respectful and giving up the right for that is sometimes important for the ministering of the gospel.

Sid: Well you did finally say “You counted the cost” as it says in the Bible and you said “Yes to the Lord.” Tell me the first time you lost your dignity.

Bill: (Laughing) Well it was a season of time where the visitation. It just came in ways that we didn’t expect we didn’t know what to do. It was the Lord dealing with me because I have said yes in the secret place He trusted me to lead some of those meetings in a public place. So the Holy Spirit would come in greater power, we didn’t always know what was happening we would examine the fruit afterwards, we’d find out that a marriage was healed, we’d find that somebody’s body was healed or some person came to Christ or something. But it didn’t always look logical at the time. And so it was something that happened to me publically but it also happened to most everyone else in the room. So it was a process and it was a season of many years where I was required because of that “Yes” that I made to the Lord I was required to live with a certain amount of risk to see what the Lord wanted to do in a given setting.

Sid: Did you ever get used to that, that risk because that doesn’t sound like the type of person you were?

Bill: No, no I’ve never I’ve had to push into it in a sense for the miracles and the healings that we see happen. It certainly easier today than it was 15, 16 and 17 years ago but I still have to intensely push into it realizing that I don’t know what’s about to happen. I’m pushing into the unknown only knowing that God is good and that He will do something significant. And so I don’t get paranoid but I really want to make sure that I hear correctly because I know that often times breakthrough is connected to our deliberate and accurate obedience.

Sid: Okay, you’ve been at this how many years has it been since this power encounter?

Bill: Since that encounter would be 1995 so it’s 18 years.

Sid: Okay, what… tell me some secrets that you have learned in that period of time that you wished that you had known at day one, if you had down it you might have not said yes. (Laughing)

Bill: (Chuckle) The secrets have to deal in 2 areas. One is the nature of God and the other is how He uses us. So the first thing would be the thing that I wished I had known you know 20-30 years ago 40 years ago when I first started. I wish I would have known how good God was. Just discovering the absolute perfect goodness of God has been the greatest delight of my life. That goodness doesn’t translate into tolerating sin, people misunderstand that and that’s not accurate but He is so incredibly kind. And I wish I would have known that because all of the healing, all of the prophetic, all of the things that we have experienced really flow out of that goodness. His heart of great, great love and compassion and affection for people; I wished I would have known that better at the beginning.

Sid: Most people judge God by their earthly father.

Bill: That’s true.

Sid: And that’s a wrong thing to do because how can you judge a human against pure love.

Bill: Yeah, you’re right and that’s messed a lot of people up because they didn’t have a good home. I had a great home and I still struggle with it and so I can only imagine what people deal with that were raised in a abusive or less than kind household. So it’s just one thing that I wish I had known earlier than I did. The second is I had this notion that you had to be a special person for God to use you. You know I grew up and my family had sat under Wigglesworth Ministry and uncle was a soloist for Aimee Semple McPherson and so we had a lot of good…

Sid: You know you are provoke… you know I’m Jewish and the Bible says “The Gentile believers to provoke the Jews to jealousy, but you’re sure doing it now but go ahead. (Laughing)

Bill: Yeah well, I grew up hearing those stories and it put an appetite in me which is really good but I caught a message that nobody was telling me but somehow I caught it that you had to be a special person. You know Wigglesworth was unusually gifted in faith, Kathryn Kuhlman had an unusual sense of God’s presence and I just never qualified. And so I would dismiss this urge to see the authentic gospel displayed with purity and power, but it kept coming back, kept coming back, kept coming back until I went to a John Wimber Conference and I saw them model demonstrate and teach how everyone, everyone can do this. And it changed my life and I’m forever indebted to…

Sid: Now wait a second now you told me about that power encounter where electricity came over your body 3 nights in a row for 3 hours so you were a special person. How can you say that that person listening to me can do what you can do?

Bill: Well first of all okay it started in ’87 it started before ’95 and it started when I was pasturing a small tiny little church up in the mountain. I didn’t have any kind of experience or reputation or anything, I just went to a conference where I saw John Wimber and his team the Vineyard Movement I saw them model how every person can do this and they did it in a way that they that fit my life. You know it was hard for me to ever imagine me being in a large crusade preaching to 10’s of 1000’s of people but I knew that I could talk one on one and could pray for someone. And they modeled that for me and it set me up and that’s when the miracles started it was 1987. The explosion came in ’95 but that wasn’t something I knew would happen. But I cried out for more knowing that I had tasted enough to be ruined forever. I really wanted a greater and a more significant breakthrough so that was my hearts cry you know and that’s how and when the Lord really really visited me that’s then.

Sid: You know I hear this often for lack of a better words such a desperation for more of God and I’ve heard this from many people that have had wonderful ministries. But if I’m understanding you right whether someone has that supernatural desperation or not when they understand it they can go for God desperately and end up with the same things that you and the people out at your school get.

Bill: Yeah, I believe that I do God is moved by hunger. And people that are hungry, you know people let me say this I’ve seen people that get really hungry but they end up in unbelief because their hunger is a striving, it’s not anchored in the goodness of God it’s not anchored in promises it’s just… it’s anchored in an ideal that they never reach. I see others that they are hungry but they know that God is good and they’re seeking for this wonderful Father to touch them more deeply and profoundly. What hurts people is when they try to have somebody else’s experience. I think it’s legitimate for us to pursue outcome but not experience.

Sid: You know what I would love everyone listening to us to do and that is have you come to their house invite a few of their friends and teach them the most important thing that every Christian has to learn how to host the presence of God. Here let me read to you what Heidi Baker said when she got a hold of this book. Bill Johnson’s book “Hosting the Presence” is one of the most powerful books that I have ever read. I was undone by chapter 1 and found myself weeping and crying out for more of the manifest presence of God to rest on my life. I was wrecked with a greater hunger to be fully possessed by the glory of God and filled with fresh longing for my life to be distinguished by His presence…”

Sid: There is a book that’s shaking up people all over the world. Why do I say that it’s shaking up people? Because certain prophetic events happened it talked about them. And so some of the top secular talk show hosts of America are saying the most amazing things about this book and it was written by a evangelical Christian whose father just happens to come from an orthodox Jewish background. And the book is called “The Last Days” the first book that Joel Rosenberg wrote was called “The Last Jihad.” And Joel how in the world did you get the idea to work into the story line all about the terrorism that would happen to America and you wrote the book before 9/11 and that’s what blows people out of the water. How did you get your thoughts to even do such a book, how did you do such a book I understand you were praying to God about it.

Joel: I was, let me set up what’s dramatic about the book and then I’ll go back and explain that. Because people that have not read “The Last Jihad” does not realize is that the first page of the book puts you inside the cockpit of a highjack aircraft highjacked by radical Islamic terrorists coming in on a kamakasi attack mission into an America city. Now I wrote that 9 months before September 11^th. As the plot of “The Last Jihad” unfolds the FBI and the CIA trance the trail of terror back to Bagdad to Iraq. And suddenly the President of the United States and his senior advisors find themselves in a showdown with Sadheim Hussein over weapons of mass destruction. All of that was written before 9/11 before the debate over going to war in Iraq and certainly before the war itself. And when it came out people were just stunned “How could you have possibly known this?” Now with people getting a sense of what it’s about back up the clock to January 2001. I had worked for a lot of interesting political leaders over the years Bill Bennett, Jack Kemp, Steve Forbs, Rush Limbaugh. As well as former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but after all of that about 10 or 11 years in the political life Sid I felt like my wife and I were praying “What should I do now with the rest of my career?” I had to ask myself “If I had been as passionate about sharing the gospel with people as I had for example with Flat Tack when I worked with Steve Forbs? And the honest conclusion was I’m comfortable but no, I had been more passionate about the flat tax or the social security reform or conservatism in general then I had about sharing my faith in Jesus as the Messiah. So my wife and I began to pray Jeremiah 33:3 “Call to Me and I will hear you and answer you and show you great and mighty things you do not know.” And my wife and I were praying with our kids we’ve got 3 boys Caleb, Jacob and Jonah 9, 7 and 5 years old we call them the Ringling Brothers.

Sid: (Laughing)

Joel:   Three ring circus in our house.

Sid: I’m sure.

Joel:   And we’d been praying with them you know Daddy needs to write a book but we need to ask God for a story something interesting that will draw people in on a fascinating story. And then about ¾’s of a way into it when hopefully somebody can’t put it down Daddy can share the gospel with people, that was my heart; that was my prayer. We were praying Jeremiah 33:3 because Daddy did not have a story to tell. Well in January of ’01 I sat down and the story that began to come out was about this high-jacked jet coming in on this kamakasi attack mission. Now some of the details were different I had visioned a flight coming into Denver and not to New York or Washington at a business jet not a commercial airliner. But the operation times that were so chillingly real in the morning of 9/11 my wife and kids and I we live in Washington not far from the Pentagon I was actually writing the second to last chapter of the last Jihad about a kamakasi attack that leads to a war with Iraq when the news began to break about these attack and it was a horrifying time for all of us in America particularly in Washington. And I had just been to the top of the World Trade Center just a few weeks before with then Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neal we had lunch in there with some Wall Street executives. And I had been right in that restaurant on the 110^th floor just marveling at this amazing feat of human engineering and technology and now is all gone. And I’m telling you as having written a story that just was so chillingly real to events that were now beginning to unfold it was was eerie I’m not sure of another way to put it. But it also felt like there’s no way I could publish this book now I mean it was too real, too raw and it wasn’t until January…

Sid: It’s a good thing that we don’t have to figure things out when we’re working for God.

Joel: Well, that’s true because I said to the Lord…I had been praying Jeremiah 33:3 and You gave me a fascinating story but now this book is useless there’s no way we can sell this book. Well, I felt like the Lord was…I don’t know what the Lord was saying to be honest it was not like He was saying “Wait” I didn’t know what He was saying I was confused. But in January of ’02 my wife and I were watching the State of the Union Address when President Bush talked about the access of evil and said the next great threat to the United States was Saddem Husseim because of his connection to terrorism.

Sid: Which you had in your book.

Joel: Exactly and his connections to weapons of mass destruction. Now at that moment Lynn and I just looked at each other and went aw-o it’s like the Twilights Zone. And the next day my agent called and he said “Do you work for the CIA.”

Sid: (Laughing)

Joel: You know every time I try to tell them “No I don’t.” He says “Well, that’s just what you have to say if you did work for the CIA. I don’t but it was clear at that point that something…a dramatic turning point had just happened. This novel which was so real a few months before because you couldn’t sell it because it was too painful for people now was foreseeing a battle with Saddeum over weapons of mass destruction that was now as it turned out that was a year and a half or a year and 3 months away. A publisher picked it up very quickly and the book came out in November ’02 and at that moment no one had ever heard of Joel Rosenberg, no one had ever heard of “The Last Jihad” but God had a book there that was so amazingly close to reality that He lifted it into the stratosphere. Very few books by first time novelists hit #1 on Amazon.com or spent 11 weeks on the New York Times best seller list.

Sid: How do you know so much about Bible prophecy? How do you know so much about the inner workings of the political scene? How do you know so much about Israel?

Joel: Well, from the time I was in college…well the time I really wrestled through with God and really came to know Him at the age of 17 I became fascinated with prophesy. First and foremost the Messianic prophecy leading up to in fact that Jesus is the Messiah. That just totally intrigued me, that I was excited to… it just every day I leaned it confirmed my faith. But I also fascinated with prophecy of the times at which we live, I was particularly drawn to Matthew 24 and Luke 21. Where Jesus was taught…where the disciples were being asking him “When are you coming back and what are the signs of the last days or the end times before you return? And I just was fascinated, wars, rumors of wars, you know the list, earthquakes, famines, revolutions, persecution of believers, the spread of the gospel. But what fascinated me most was the idea of this parable of the fig tree and the fig tree being so often in the Old Testament the evidence of Israel. And the idea of that Israel would start to blossom again. Or in Ezekiel 37 come together the dry bones coming back together as a country. And then in Luke 21 where Jesus says that “Jerusalem will come back under the control of the Jewish people after a long time after control of a nation of Gentiles. Well, I was born in April of 1967 to months later Jerusalem came back under the control of the Jewish people after as you know 2000 years under the control of many different nations. And this is just totally fascinated me and I…

Sid: You know someone who hasn’t even had an experiential happening with God if they were to just look at these prophecies in Israel they would have to say “This Book is not a natural book, this Bible is a supernatural book and I must believe.”

Joel: That’s right and that’s how it impacted me. And now spiritually like the Lord never took us into becoming missionaries or you know working on a church staff or para-church staff. He took us professionally into the political realm and that’s where and matched kind of a separate track but parallel began to work with very…some of the best Middle East experts in the world.

Sid: Listen you were the Senior Advisor to Netanyahu who I believe is going to be the next Prime Minister of Israel and many other people believe this. What was that like?

Joel: Well, that was a fascinating time because when I got hired to work for the former Prime Minister it was a time when his processor I’m sorry his successor Ahud Burach was Prime Minister. Burach had just come to Washington with Yasser Afafat and Bill Clinton to basically give away 97% of the west bank and Gaza and Samaria.

Sid: We’re going to pick up on that story because we’re running short of time. But what is your personal view of a Palestinian state?

Joel: Well, as I write about this in “The Last Days” I think that…I think that it’s going to happen.

Sid: Unfortunately I do too and I say unfortunately but go ahead.

Joel: Yeah, I think there’s almost like history is compelling it to happen but I don’t believe that you can give away that which is not yours to give. The President, the America President can’t, and the Israel Prime Minister can’t it doesn’t mean they won’t but God promised Judea and Samaria to the Jewish people long before any of the current President or Prime Ministers.

Sid: In other words the west Bank. We’re out of time Joel.

SID: Hello. Sid Roth here. Welcome to my world where it’s naturally supernatural. My guest has found that wherever he goes he can release the Spirit of God. I mean, he walks into buying a cell phone. You’ve bought cell phones before. And he’s just talking, but he’s bringing the Spirit of God in this place and h’s figured out how to be conscious of it and how the presence of God will just radiate wherever he goes. And guess what? The people in the cell phone store fall over slain in the Spirit. You’re trusting in an understanding in how to walk in the presence of God like that? I am. You know, miracles just flow off of my guest. I mean, he’s just—I’m just having to put some makeup on me and the makeup artist is telling me she has a rod in her leg. It causes her to waddle and have discomfort. And so I said, Bill, go pray for her. And just a few seconds ago, she was doing makeup, and she said, “This is amazing.” No, it’s not. It’s normal, normal as defined by the Bible. Now Bill, just kind of whet their appetite. What kind of miracles are happening now that are kind of spectacular going on in your life? Is there a trend?

BILL: There seems to be seasons. I don’t understand that. But there seems to be shifts in focus and emphasis. In the last few years we’ve had a great number of people healed of head trauma, very serious brain injuries, fatal things that were terminal diseases of the brain all the way down to dyslexia, bi-polar, those kinds of things. We’ve also had a lot of people healed with metal in their body where they had restricted movement or you could feel a metal plate in the wrist, and the screws and all of that. I really was encouraged from James Maloney, actually, to go after this because he has had so much breakthrough in that area. So I just started taking a risk looking for the problem and then praying for the people, and you can feel that it’s gone, the rod, the plates. The things that would prevent them from bending they now have complete mobility. It’s extraordinary.

SID: Randy Clark did his doctorate thesis. How many people did he say had metal turn to bone, approximately?

BILL: It’s hundreds. It’s hundreds of people in his study that he has names, addresses, everything. Folks, over, I think it was, I think he did it over a three-year period of time. It’s hundreds of people, not those that just raised their hand to say, but actually were able to follow up and verify. And it’s an extraordinary miracle.

SID: Now I think you’re extraordinary, and I’m going to tell you why. Five generations of pastors and his son is the sixth generation. I think that’s phenomenal. You are a blessed man. But even with all of that, you really didn’t feel qualified to move in the supernatural or the spectacular things that are commonplace for you right now. What changed it?

BILL: Oh goodness. I would pray for a season over people. Nothing would happen. [unintelligible] I would read on how to pray for people. Nothing would ever happen. Nobody ever got healed. I had some die, but nobody would get healed.

SID: By the way, he may be joking. But actually I had that happen to me. I started praying people. Someone died

BILL: I’m not joking. It happened to me, too. But anyway, it just wouldn’t leave the pages of scripture. So while I would leave it for a season, I would come back and be encouraged, and go after it. No breakthrough. Finally, in 1987, somebody encouraged me to go to a John Weber conference. And I saw, I heard them teach what I had been teaching for quite an extended period of time. So nothing was different in that aspect. But I saw that they took risks that I wasn’t willing to take. And I came home. I didn’t pray any differently. I started looking for problems, which was a new twist for me. But I didn’t pray differently, but people started getting healed. It just, it wasn’t just on me. It was actually on the entire church, which was what I wanted. I wanted everybody to get in on it, you know. And so I came home, began to look for problems, pray for people, and miracles actually started immediately. And the one that really lit me up, ignited my heart was a miracle that took place in a store. It was in a public place. It was just a friend who was not a believer, confessed their problems, had to retire at an early age with his arthritis. And I just said, God wants to heal you. Took two minutes to pray, whatever. Dramatically, dramatically healed.

SID: What was he healed of?

BILL: Arthritis all through the joints. He couldn’t pull tools. He couldn’t reach for boxes on his shelf. He owned a business and he was going to have to retire and quit at a young age, in his 40s. And he was just dramatically, dramatically healed, in moments.

SID: Are you telling me everyone that is born again can walk in the Kingdom and have miracles happen?

BILL: Oh yeah, absolutely.

SID: Everyone.

BILL: We must.

SID: And no exceptions.

BILL: No, exceptions, no.

SID: They don’t have to fight generations of pastors.

BILL: No, no, no.

SID: Okay. Nineteen nighty-five, Bill gets desperate. For eight months, he is praying. What are you praying for eight months?

BILL: Oh my. I get a little teary-eyed on this one. I just was praying for more. I just, I knew there was more. We were seeing breakthrough and I was so thankful, and I almost felt greedy. But my heart was exploding with hunger for more, more of God, more of His manifest presence, more of the kinds of breakthroughs that we see in Scripture. I cried out day and night. I’d wake up in the middle of the night. I would wake myself praying. I didn’t wake up to pray. I’m actually praying in my sleep and I wake myself up praying.

SID: By the way, you know how I know this is true? His associate pastor went on a retreat with him and he said, all night long he hears this guy pray, “More Lord, more, more,” in his sleep. So I know it’s true. Then he said one thing more. He said there was like a glow over your face.

BILL: Yeah. Yeah, I didn’t find that out until a year or more later.

SID: I think God likes us praying for more. That’s what I believe, wants you praying for more. Okay. So you prophesy to someone. Maybe at three in the morning you have an encounter with God, to someone else. Three in the morning, what happens to you?

BILL: That same night, I woke up with, you know how you’re in a dead sleep and then in an instant, it’s a millisecond you’re as awake as you could possibly be. And I had what felt like a thousand volts of electricity going through my body, and it was terrifying, exhilarating, all of the above. And I had, the only thing I had control of was my head. I turned my head and I saw the digital clock next to the bed. It was three a.m. exactly. And I instantly remembered the prophetic word I gave to a friend, and I said out loud, I said, “You set me up.” Because I knew that this was God, but I couldn’t explain it. It was, I was embarrassed. I mean, my arm, I had no control over my limbs. I would try to grab my arms and bring them down. My legs would get more violent. And it was, this just went on and on, and on. And I felt my face turn red. You know, how you blush. I was embarrassed over what was happening.

SID: Had you ever had any paradigm for this? Had you ever seen something?

BILL: No, never heard of it. Never heard of it.

SID: Okay. Hold that thought. When we come back, I’m going to have him pick up. And in the meantime, you keep telling God, “More God, more.”

Sid: Hello this is Sid Roth here with Tommy Reid. Tommy before we went on the air I was talking to you about your experiences with Dr. Cho. You went there just as was really getting started. And he had never… when you met him did he really tell you he had never seen a miracle?

Tommy: Well he had seen some healings that they interpreted for him but he never seen a great miracle, he never seen a miracle that was kind of earth shattering to him.

Sid: He’d seen a neck being healed from pain which if someone has a pain in the neck and some people do right now you’re being healed. But he had never seen a blind person see, a deaf hear, a dead person come to life that’s what you’re talking about.

Tommy: Yeah, and he look at me and he said “I don’t even know if I believe this.” Now he had been healed as a young man about 18 or 19 so he saw his own healing but he had never seen a miracle take place in church before. I remember I looked at him I was just a young evangelist and I was probably not too kind sometimes maybe. And I looked at him and said “Bother Cho you will see great miracles during the next few weeks” because he was going to travel with me all over the nation. And we did see that, I mean I would look out at the audience I have pictures that I can’t find right now some place in moving they got lost but a lot of people would… every night there would be a cripple walk, there would be a blind eye see, and that’s why so many people came to our meetings. I mean I remember times when we would be carried out on people’s shoulders because they would get so excited about the miracles of God and he saw that and began to believe for that.

Sid: Well tell me about one of the first major miracles he saw.

Tommy: Well one of the first major miracles and God used him in this and he began to believe for miracles we were holding a meeting in a Presbyterian Church a large Presbyterian Church that was jammed with people 1000’s standing on the outside. And I had to go on to the next city so I went on to the next city with another interpreter he stayed and did another week because the Holy Spirit was moving so greatly in that city. One night it came to him and said “Brother Cho there is a person dying in the hospital if you don’t come down right now he may not live until the service is finished.” So he left the service; went down the hill to the hospital walked in and the man was dead. They had pulled the sheet over his head and the doctor said “No use praying for him he’s dead.” Brother Cho now that he gotten this new impetus on healing pulled the sheet down off of his head, commanded the man to walk. He got up off of that bed now put his clothes on and this was a very steep hill between there and the church and he walked him all the way up that steep hill and he walked into the church and said “The dead man is alive!” The first miracle that he saw and that I remember him seeing that was under his own ministry was a dead man brought to life.

Sid: But you know what I believe Tommy I believe we are at the point right now that we are going to see the greatest miracles the world has ever seen. I mean creative miracles, I mean people without limbs the limbs just pop right out. I can’t wait to see see… I just as you talk about the world inside is more real and more important than what’s going on in the outside; on the inside of me I see not just me but I see the average believer that’s listening right now walking in miracles beyond what we’re even talking about.

Tommy: Oh, I have no doubt of that that is the world that is inside of me. I believe that we are on the precipice; we’re on the cusps of seeing miracles like the church has never seen before in its entire history. You know we’ve seen great miracle of healing I’ve seen eyeballs that were growing in people, I’ve seen great miracles of healing but we are on the cusp of seeing something greater than any of us have seen before.

Sid: Tell me one of the most amazing miracles that happened to you in the Philippians.

Tommy: Yeah, this was an amazing miracle I’ve seen many cripples walk but we had gone to a town in the Southern tip of the Boson Island. And there was a group of young people that were opposed to the meetings. And so they were so opposed that we ended up not being able to hold the first nights meeting. So we went out to the country to a little tiny barrio of about 2000 people and set a PA system up and the whole barrio came 2000 people came and jammed that barrio. The little plaza in the center of the Barrio and the Lord said to me and this is unusual because when you’re a healing evangelist you pray for the easy cases first. The Lord said to me “Pray for the hardest case in this place tonight it’s a cripple if you will call them out I will heal them.” So I looked around and so I saw this woman on a stretcher and so I said to the interpreter “What’s wrong with her?” They said “Well, she is unable to walk and I said “God’s going to heal her.” So they brought her up and they kind of dragged her out of bed and put her up on the stretcher in front of me and I said “God is going to heal you tonight; you’re going to be healed and you’re going to walk.” And I asked “What’s wrong with her?” And they said arthritis so I prayed for the arthritis, I rebuked the arthritis as an evangelist will do and she couldn’t walk. And all of a sudden something said inside of me God said to me “Tommy she doesn’t have arthritis you prayed for the wrong disease you must be specific.” So I said to the interpreter “I prayed for the arthritis she wasn’t healed that’s not what’s wrong with her.” Well, they got between Tagalikan and Elik they’d gotten the wrong interpretation and they said “No, she is paralyzed.” She had some kind of a stroke or something and she’s 100% paralyzed in the right side of her body and at least 50% more on the other, she cannot walk.” With that grabbed her and I said “In the name of Jesus I command you to walk.” And she got up and leaped off of that stretcher, began to walk and then she began to run and she ran around and around and around the audience. She as obviously healed there was not doubt about it so I said to her “Well, we’re going to have this big crusade in the capitol city would you come and give your testimony tomorrow night? Well I wanted to be sure she was still healed; oh yea of little faith you know I wanted… so the next morning we drove out to the barrio to see if she and all of the sudden the whole town they saw the little yellow Ford come toward, the whole town 2000 people began to just surge towards us and she was leading them. “I’m still healed, I’m still healed.” And so she came to the audience that night she came to the big meeting and she gave her testimony and when she did these young people who were opposing the meeting said “Oh, the Americano is a rich man he paid her a 100 pesos’ to say that, she wasn’t really healed.” And so it kind of interrupted the meeting and you can understand they didn’t know whether to believe the boys or believe me or to believe the woman. And so the meeting was okay a few people got saved but there were no other miracles. And when we left town to go to the next city all of the sudden I heard the news that the young man who had opposed the meeting came down with the same amount of paralysis 100% in the right side and 50% in his left side. And as far as I know did not walk another day in his life. Now I don’t understand the end of the story all I know it was probably the greatest miracle I’ve ever saw.

Sid: Well the one thing that I do know is if you come against God you’re in big trouble; that was big trouble. You know something that was so amazing to me is tell me about the time your father was dying in Manila.

Tommy: Oh, that was probably the greatest miracle we ever had in our family except my own healing. We had gone to the Philippines on a one way ticket it was interesting how we got there I had sold my Cadillac convertible to pay our way and it paid a one way ticket and enough to stay there a couple of weeks. And we had planned to stay with missionaries and we had everything set to have meetings. We got there and everything fell apart just everything. The place we had to stay the missionary went home; we checked into a hotel we had no money to pay our hotel bill and no ticket back home. And in the middle of all of that my dad laying in that bed contracted some kind of an oriental disease. And got sicker and sicker every day he’d be more and more ill and I’d go into his bedside and want to pray for him. And my dad said “No, no don’t pray for me, pray for our destiny, pray for where we’re going, what we’re going to do.” And then I would say “Let me pray for the finances we need money to go back home; ‘No, no we’re here for a reason, pray for the reason.’” So I walked in there and he wouldn’t let me pray for us, he wouldn’t let me pray for his meal, he wouldn’t let me pray for money, he wouldn’t let me pray for money; he wouldn’t let me pray for a ticket, he wouldn’t let me pray for the hotel bill none of that he wouldn’t let me pray for. Then one day he said “It’s time for God to answer our prayers; that phone is going to ring Tommy and we’re going to be Pastors of Bethel Temple.” I said “That will never happen, I’m 26 years of age they’ll never want me to pastor the largest church in their denomination, they’re not going to want you to pastor you’ve been a businessman you haven’t been a preacher; they’re never going to ask us to pastor the church.” He said “Tommy, that’s the prayer I wanted you to pray destiny; pray for what we’re here to do.” The phone rang and the voice of the Missions Department of Springfield Missouri said “You have been chosen as the new Pastors of Bethel Temple.” Well it solved all of our problems, the money problem, the ticket problem, the place to live problem, then Morris Cerullo walked in and paid our hotel bill.

Sid: But your father was dying I don’t get it.

Tommy: I know I don’t get it either except to know this that God has our destiny in mind. God has a voice that says to us “This is the way, walk yea in it.”

Sid: So was he healed gradually or what happened?

Tommy: Oh no, he was not sick anymore. From the time that that telephone rang and he saw the end of the story at that point he was healed. The fever was gone, the sickness was gone he was perfect.

Sid: Now you have a great love for the nation Israel. The thing that I think is so amazing is in 1948 you were in school and the teacher made an announcement. Tell me the announcement and tell me why it had such an effect on you.

Tommy: It had an effect on me because I lived in the 1930’s when we had all of the prophetic teachers come by our church. A little boy sits there and sermon’s don’t necessarily can’t understand all of them. But when the prophecy teachers would come with all of their charts I could see the pictures I understood that. And they told me that Israel would become a nation, the Jewish people would come back home, and Israel would become a nation again. So I grew up with this knowledge I knew that the Israel would be reborn, I knew the people would come back home; I knew the Jews would be restored to their homeland. So I remember sitting in the classroom in 1948 as a young man in Junior High I remember when the teacher walked in and said “We just heard the announcement Israel is a nation.” And I knew that the word of God was true there was no doubt that what I’d been taught was true. But I had a lot… my dad absolutely love Jewish people. But a Jewish person walked in you would have thought Jesus walked in with my father. He lived to witness to Jews, that was his mission field. We frequented and we would go to Philadelphia and we go to 5^th Street and visit all of those little Jewish shops, and every Jew along that street was my dad’s friend. He loved Jews I was taught to love the Jewish people because they were God’s chosen.

Sid: But you know I still… I want to take you back to that… you were in school and a Social Studies teacher you’d been taught your whole life to love the Jew and then one day Israel would be a nation. Well it was impossible for Israel to be a nation but in 1948 tell me the emotion that went on through you inside of your when your teacher says “Israel has just become a nation?”

Tommy: Well I think the first reaction I had is the word of God is true by the time you’re in Junior High and even though I’ve seen the miracles there’s a few dots that begin to come in. All of a sudden I realized this book the word of God is the word of God and it does come to past and I had lived to see one of the greatest events of the history of the world. Sid, I don’t think we can realize even though we say it we can’t realize the immense miracle that God did in the rebirth of Israel, it was a miracle that goes beyond our comprehension.

Sid: I mean it was like if today there was no Israel and tomorrow President Obama says “I declare that Israel is going to be a Jewish homeland.” That would have been impossible for him to say that, it was impossible in ‘48 for Israel to be a nation. But God said “A nation will be formed in one day, and from the 4 corners of the earth the Jews were returned to their homeland.” He even said the ancient language would be spoken in the streets of Jerusalem. At that time I mean Hebrew was just for the holy books, it wasn’t a spoken language today. I mean there were so many miracles that occurred even today why is it that you give your missions money always including going to the Jew first?

Tommy: Well you know God spoke to me and I as you know a lover of Israel Robert Sterns is now the man who is Pastor of the church that I pastured for 50 years. One of the reasons that I wanted Robert here was I wanted to be sure that this church was a recognition of what God was doing with the Jewish people and with Israel. And of course we’re tremendous supporters of Israel. But what I don’t understand is there is not greater miracles except maybe the resurrection that has taken place in the history of the world, than for God not just to save a person, not just to resurrect a person but to resurrect a nation because He made a covenant with them. Tto me it’s the most amazing thing but then I have to realize what God said to Abraham. Abraham said “How do you know, how do I know you’re going to give me this land?” God said “Well I’m going to swear by myself.” And he showed him this picture of the smoking furnace and the pillar of fire representing the Godhead; I’m going to swear by Myself that this is your land.” It is the… how can I believe the covenant of God to heal me if I don’t believe that covenant?

Sid: Tommy our time is slipping away but … When you wrote the book “How to Live Out of a Dream” what did you hope to accomplish?

Tommy: I live in a world that’s different than most preachers; I think I hear things different than most preachers. You know I’m kind a academic when I’m preaching but I can tell you that I don’t want to preach things that I don’t know God has said to me. I want to wake up in the morning and hear Jesus and say the things that He wants me to say. I don’t even want to be on your show and just say things by rote. I want to know that when I speak to you and speak to the world that I’ve heard what God wants me to say. I am firmly convinced that one of the messages that God has for the world today that the problems of our world could be solved, the world could be evangelized if we only heard God’s voice. Most people just don’t hear God’s voice, they don’t listen, their parents tell them you know that’s just your imagination and they cut off the very source of God speaking to them. I want to go out and teach the world to hear God’s voice because I believe its only possible, it’s absolutely mandatory.

Sid: You know there’s so much doom and gloom in the news today that even Christians talking to one another they’re saying “Oh, do you see what’s going on with the morality in America? Do you see what’s going on with the economy? Do you see what’s going on with disease?” But I believe that those that are listening to us right now this is their greatest hour… when we come back I’d like you to teach how we can hear His voice. How we can dream His dreams. I mean you say that it’s simple and I know that it’s simple. Tommy the next broadcast that I do that people will hear I will have just returned from Jerusalem. I’m leaving in a couple of days for Jerusalem. I am going to have a meeting Jerusalem, Israel and we have reservations of 400 people we’re expecting over 500 unsaved Jewish people. What I do is I call it a lecturer on the supernatural and I really I don’t say I’m going to talk about God I say I certainly don’t say I’m going to talk about Jesus. I say I’ve spent the last 35 years studying the paranormal I use that word I want nonbelievers and the supernatural. I’m going to speak an many people are going to be physically healed in their seats, I’ve done this all over the world. But do you realize just as a historic as it was for Israel to become a nation, it is historic for 4 or 500 unsaved Jewish people to hear about the good news of Jesus, witness miracles in their own lives. People will stand up, 30, 40 people are going to stand up and say I’m Jewish nonbelievers I’ve just been physically healed and I believe and I’m believing for 100% a 100% of these Jewish people will stand up and make professions of faith. Now to me that is …has never happened in the history of modern day Israel but we’re in a new time. I’m telling you the move of God has begun.