Sid Roth

SID: You know, David, looking back, you really were sabotaged. You really had no chance in life. I mean, your Russian Jewish father walks out when you’re, what, one year of age, and he was addicted to gambling. And then your mother remarries to a pastor and the pastor gets drunk on Saturday night and preaches on Sunday, and slaps you around. You should have been, you should have hated all religion. That’s what you were being set up for, I believe.

 

DAVID: Yes. Actually the enemy was on me before I knew there was an enemy, and from the beginning of my life it was up to destroy what now I know that God was going to do in my life. But the plans of God can never be defeated, so here I am today. And what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. The very curses that the enemy thought he was putting on me, God used at, Romans 8:28, “For my blessing.” Because I hated phoniness and hypocrisy, and I couldn’t stand it. That became my greatest blessing coming into a miracle ministry where I won’t exaggerate and won’t have phoniness in my life.

 

SID: Okay. So 14 years after you get born from above you had a revelation from God and you start a Bible study in this mega-million-dollar business that you have. And your wife then says, “You should have him counsel you on some of that.” I mean, you went through a lot of stuff and you need a counselor, especially because of the interpersonal relationships that were so wounded throughout your life. And so you make a meeting appointment with this pastor that’s running the Bible study in your business, and what happened?

 

DAVID: Yes. And by the way, my wife said to me, she said, “Go see that pastor. He can break that off your life.” And I’m thinking, what it is an icicle or a barnacle, you’re going to break it off my life? What is that? And, but it took me about three months before I’d go see him.

 

SID: And by the way, how skeptical were you of miracles?

 

DAVID: Because of the phoniness and the things that I had seen and people that said things in the name of Jesus or God I didn’t hear anything anyone had to say because all I had known was phoniness, so I was very, very skeptical about other things that were not real. I basically, I was like Thomas. I had to see it and know it, otherwise I couldn’t believe it.

 

SID: Even though it was in the Bible, you still had to see it and know it.

 

DAVID: Absolutely. There was no way, because I believe Jesus was right, the people representing him I don’t think were so right.

 

SID: Okay. So what happened when you got together with this pastor?

 

DAVID: So I go to meet with this pastor. I’m thinking it’s another counseling session and I always have all the right things to say. If you’re happy with your life today you got to be happy that happened to you to make you this way. I knew all the right things and felt I was doing fine. But I told my wife, I said, “I think God wants to do something in my life and something is holding me back. I think it’s my past.” So what happens is I go see this pastor. I’m thinking it will be a counseling session. He doesn’t let me speak a word. He opens up the Bible. He shows me all the verses for two hours for the baptism of the Holy Spirit and tells me all these things.

 

Pastor: Suddenly a sound like that of a roaring, rushing wind…

 

DAVID: And afterwards he says, “What do you think?”

 

Pastor: What do you think?

 

DAVID: I’m worn out. I’m exhausted. I said, “I think you wore me out. I’m exhausted.” He goes,

“No, what do you think?”

 

DAVID: I said, “I always have two prayers. One is Jesus, I want to know you better, and the other is, I always said, Jesus I want all that you have for me. He goes, “That’s good enough for me. Stand up, hold up your hands and I’m going to pray for you.”

 

SID: Had you ever held up your hands like King David said, “I lift holy hands to…”?

 

DAVID: Never, never. I came from a very conservative background.

 

SID: Okay.

 

DAVID: So anyway, what happens is this pastor, I stand up, hold up my hands, he prays for me. At first, he starts praying things that he knew about my life no one could have ever told him or he didn’t know. I didn’t know at the time, but it’s called a word of knowledge. So then as he’s praying, this power of God goes right through me. I didn’t know what it was, but I’ll give you the example. When I lived in Buffalo, growing up it was cold. If you go into a restaurant and they opened the door in the winter, a draft would blow through you, your jacket and you would feel cold. Well this was the same thing. It was like a draft that blew through me, except it was on the inside of my body. So I feel this and I’m saying, what is that? As I’m thinking about this draft, all of a sudden this pastor says to me, “What do you know about healing?” I said, “I know it happens in the Bible.” He goes, “No, no, it happens today.” I literally said, “No disrespect, Pastor, I’ll believe it when I see it.” He goes, “You won’t see it, you’ll do it.” I said, “Why don’t I just see it first and then we’ll talk about doing.” That was the end. But I want to tell you, this is how skeptical, and he prayed for me. It was amazing. I went home that night, I thought, this pastor tricked me. He had me hold my hands up so long that my body went numb and that’s why I had that feeling.

 

SID: But you felt something.

 

DAVID: But I thought it was the devil telling me no way.

 

SID: You know that devil is diabolical.

 

DAVID: You know, he is and I didn’t know that at the time, which made it worse. So many people, I was like, when people talked about the devil, you know, I said if people would pull themselves up by their bootstraps and stop blaming the devil they’d be just fine. I didn’t believe that stuff. And the funny thing is I still tell people today, that’s still partially true. Sometimes people are so busy messing up their own lives it’s not the devil. But the truth is I fight the enemy all the time, and we’ll get to that, I’m sure.

 

SID: Okay. But what I’m interested in right now is something happened with all that garbage over all those years, all the hurts and wounding.

 

DAVID: Well let me tell you because this is key. So the first miracle was actually a healing of my past. I had so many stories. My daughter at six years old could tell you everything that happened to me. I would tell the story every night. My wife would tell you she was so sick. If we went to a restaurant, a waiter offered fish, I wouldn’t just say no, thank you, I’d say, “My grandmother shoved fish down my throat all my life and made me sit there while it was cold for ten hours. She died and I won’t forget it.” I had such an issue from my past. Here’s what happened. The minute he prayed, literally, half of the stories from my past I couldn’t even remember, they were erased. The other half, it was as if, I’ll give you the example. If you were in Vietnam watching your friends getting shot in the trenches versus if you were at a home, you didn’t know anyone over there and you were reading about it in the newspaper, you have all the facts, but there’s no emotion. From that day until now, my past has never come up again.

 

SID: But beyond that, he got a gift, a supernatural gift of healing. The whole thing that he thought was phony baloney, he now has. He gets healed two times himself and then he heals a prominent NFL football player. And I want you to share, and this is so important, the most important secret that you have learned to walk in everything the Bible says you can walk in, every promise is yours. Yours. We’ll be right back.