Sid Roth
Sid: This week I have been sharing my testimony. Why? Because we are on the edge of the greatest move of God’s Spirit in history that will start with the Jewish people, then spread to all people just as the first church started with the Jew and then spread to all people. The greatest move of God’s Spirit for evangelism in the history of this earth; the greatest move of signs and wonders. Why? Again to reach the Jew, the Bible says “The Jew requires a sign.”
So boy was I messed up. As a matter of fact, I had people who read my testimony book and they say “Sid were you really this bad?” Some people don’t even like me after they read it. I felt I had a prophetic dream and God told me I must write my testimony book exactly the way it happened because I don’t have a problem with it because that person doesn’t live anymore; I’m a new creation, a new species, and if you didn’t know how bad I was then you couldn’t tell the difference. That’s why God had me write this, but more important He had me write this book so that you will understand the average American Jewish person you’re shortly going to bump into that is desperate to know Jesus. I tell you I proclaim that that average American Jewish person is desperate to know Jesus, but you don’t know this because you’re not opening your mouth and allowing God to fill it.
Well God is going to do a move of His Spirit on Jewish people but there are going to be asking questions and you must have good answers. This book has questions and answers but just by reading the story then give it to a Jewish person that God Himself is going to have cross your path.
On yesterday’s broadcast you found out that I was involved in the New Age and I was coming apart at the seams. Remember when I told you as a young kid I had this experience about death and it was so objectionable I blocked it from my mind? Well life was more difficult than that objectionable thing called death. I mean I reached my point, I go involved in this astral projection where your spirit leaves its body and you think this was… I was just going slightly nuts. Well, I was going just slightly nuts but it’s real. Duke University has a school of parapsychology, many colleges do. The Russians have been doing this for years.
I can tell you my spirit would leave my body and when this would happen this is the thought that I had. One I’ll go to sleep my spirit will leave my body and won’t make it back in time. If you’ve ever seen these Rod Serling science-fiction stories I have a plot that is so horrible you could put it together. Just in case there are young people listening I’m not going to explain it, but I had so much fear I was afraid to live, I was afraid to die.
My wife by the way was raised in a Christian home, they weren’t practicing at all they didn’t go to church. Their father was actually an atheist, her mother was a Christian. They shipped her off to church, they did not go themselves, but they shipped her off. This one day she walked down the aisle and became a believer in Jesus. When she got college she wasn’t prepared for her atheistic professors. She said “I wouldn’t become an atheist just in case there’s a God but I became an agnostic.”
When we got married I insisted that she convert to Judaism, she didn’t want to but I insisted. So she converted to Judaism. So you might say she was a Southern Baptist, agnostic, Orthodox Jew, she really was.
So worse day in my life I didn’t care whether I lived or died. I went out to a Jewish bookstore I bought a mezuzah, you see mezuzahs sometimes on Jewish doorposts they have scripture inside of them. I put it around my neck, I had a Bible at that time and I put it under my pillow. I was convinced I was involved with the devil himself, that I had opened myself up to the New Age. There was no where I could go for help, I couldn’t go to my parents who would give their life for me. They’d send me to psychiatrists one of the highest instances of suicide is among psychiatrists in this country. So they’re really going to help me? No! My problem was spiritual, it wasn’t mental or emotional, I had a demon inside of me and I need it out.
So by that point someone had given me a little booklet called the 4 Spiritual Laws, and I read these and I confessed my sins and I made Jesus my Lord, and nothing happened. So I didn’t even tell the guy that gave me the book, but I figured it didn’t work because in the New Age I had all sorts of feelings and experiences. But I had said that prayer then that night, the worst night of my life, I’m afraid my spirit’s going to leave my body and I’m going to be buried alive, awful thoughts going through my mind. So I said a 2 word prayer, but before I prayed that prayer I called my wife Joy. Remember I had been separated for a year, and I said “Joy it’s bad please pray for me.” She said “I will.” I hung up, she hung up, I said a 2 word prayer “Jesus help.” That was it I went to sleep, I didn’t have a dream, had that in the New Age. I didn’t have a vision, had that in the New Age, and God has all of these things authentically in Christianity. He gave me something I never had in the New Age that fear that was encrusting me that was so tangible I could cut it with a knife. The phone would ring I could remember today even when it would ring I would just shake I was so nervous when the phone would ring.
I didn’t want to live, I didn’t want to die I was in awful shape, I just wanted out! I didn’t want Jesus but I was told that His power was greater than the power that I was involved in, and I was willing to try anything. Even coming from a Jewish Orthodox background and I said “Jesus help.”
I went to sleep that night not caring whether I lived or died and when I woke up in the morning, I tell you the evil within me was gone. As I was encrusted in fear, I was encased in liquid love. I had never felt such a feeling of peace in my entire life, and don’t ask me how I knew this but I knew that Jesus was responsible and I was very grateful. Then I heard the voice of God for the first time in my life that I knew it was God. He said “Return to your wife and daughter.” I returned and Joy and I celebrated our 39th wedding anniversary. My daughter is married to a believer, she’s a believer. My father, my mother, my Jewish sister, my Jewish brother in law all believers. God is so good!
I’ll tell you something, I started reading the Bible for myself and I found such evidence, even that 18th chapter of Deuteronomy that I read. It says in that same chapter, remember where it talks about the New Age is an abomination? It says in that same 18th chapter the 18th verse “The Lord said to me “What they have spoken is good.” Then God said “I will raise up for them a prophet like you,” He’s speaking to Moses. So there’ll be a prophet like Moses from among their brethren, which will be Jewish, “and I’m going to My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him. And it shall be that whoever will not hear My words, which He speaks in My name I will require it of him.” So this will be a greater prophet than Moses, that will be a Jew that will be God’s spokesman, but Moses was God’s spokesman. It will be almost like God’s word will be inside of Him. That’s what John was explaining. He said “The Word was with God, the Word was God, and the Word became flesh.” Then I read in Jeremiah 31:31 “Behold the day has come when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their forefathers which they violated, but under this covenant I will remember their sins no more. They shall know me and have intimacy with Me.”
Then I read the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, I mean that was written 800 years before Jesus even came to earth. I read that same chapter to my Orthodox Jewish father who the last thing in the world would want to believe that Jesus was the Messiah. He said “You’re reading from a Christian Bible because you’re describing Jesus.” Then I read about His birth and His family and the Gentiles would follow Him, all in the Jewish scriptures. It is so clear you need help to get confused.
There are scales on the eyes of the Jewish people. I can just tell you my story and this was over 30 years ago. God restored my mind, He restored my health, He restored my marriage, He gave me what I was always looking for, He gave me intimacy with God. I know that there is a deeper intimacy, I know that there is a great Jewish wedding coming. I know that God is preparing His bride right now for that wedding, and I know that one of the catalysts for that wedding is intimacy with God. Another catalyst of that wedding is walking in signs and wonders, and the major catalyst for that wedding is for Gentile Christians to do what is written and not say “I want a flaky prophecy from a flaky prophet.” You’re not following the written words of the living God who says in Romans 11:11 “Salvation has come to the Gentile to provoke the Jew to jealousy.”
Your purpose is to reach Jewish people with the gospel, and somehow in reaching that Jewish person with the gospel it says “If it was a blessing the Jewish people rejected their Messiah, how much greater blessing when they receive their Messiah?” It’s going to cause life from the dead and the church will not become the institutional religious church that it has become today filled with as much tradition as we Jewish people have. It is going to be what the book of Ephesians calls “The glorious church” because it’s going to be so filled with the glory of God. When Jew and Gentile come together and that middle wall of separation comes down the Jew needs the Gentile Christian, the Gentile Christian needs the Jew. We are incomplete without each other, and in Him we become a new creation, that new creation has a name and His name is Jesus. So simple you need help to get confused.
