Sid Roth

KYLE: Welcome back to Something More! I’m Kyle Winkler and joining me is Bruce Van Natta! Bruce, we’re talking about prayer! And you were just telling us about your friend Tim and how he didn’t realize that God was speaking to him the whole time but yet He was!

BRUCE: Yeah, and I think it’s so common! I think we see this so often with Christians who don’t believe or realize that God is speaking to anybody just like Tim. Even then he said it’s a coincidence! What a crazy coincidence. And I said Tim, look at the timing! Look at the timing! We’re talking about seconds! 

KYLE: And this was time after time!

BRUCE: Three times in a row over the period of three weeks and it comes right down to the second! It wasn’t a coincidence! And I said tell me what prompted you? And he said it was just a thought. And I said that’s it, Tim! That’s how God speaks to us! It’s those thoughts! Now discernment then is realizing that that thought is really from God, right? I mean and getting mature in knowing that. But God is speaking and it’s Spirit to spirit so it comes in our thoughts.

KYLE: How do we get to the point of recognizing that it’s God’s voice in our lives? I know you have something with a State Fair that has helped you with this. 

BRUCE: Yeah. Well, so I just use this analogy a lot of times for people because it makes sense to them. Let’s say you and I are at a State Fair. Any other large function with thousands of people and you got separated from your loved one. A husband, a wife, a brother, a sister. You get separated from someone and there’s thousands of people around you. You can’t see them but all of a sudden they start calling your name in that crowd. You’re going to what? You’re going to recognize that voice. Even if you can’t see them you’re going to recognize that voice because you know them! So you’re going to recognize their voice because you know them and it’s the same way with God!  

KYLE: Which goes back to the scripture you mentioned in the previous segment.

BRUCE: Exactly.

KYLE: “That My sheep hear My voice.”

BRUCE: Exactly. And so once we get to know Him, once we have intimacy and get to know Him. How do we do that? We do that by spending time! Just like you do with anybody else. Spending time with them! How do we spend time with God? Through prayer. Through reading the Bible. You know just that back and forth. Practicing His presence. And then we get to realize oh, this is God speaking! Oh, I just read this verse. This is applying right now! But you know in that State Fair the person recognizes the voice because they know Him! It’s the same way with us! We have to get to know God! We have to get to know Him so that when you know when He speaks we recognize that voice now.

KYLE: After all the distractions, and there are plenty with all the social media and everything that is going on, there are plenty of voices and the only way that we’re really going to hear God is if we can get into His Word. If we can be intimate with Him! Spend time with Him so that we’re hearing His voice over all of the others!  

BRUCE: That’s right.

KYLE: What do you say to people that would say well I don’t know if God speaks anymore? You know there was even a recent media person that said people have, mental illness if they’re hearing from God! 

BRUCE: Sure.

KYLE: What do you say to something like that?

BRUCE: It’s real, simple! I go back to the Word! John 10:27. “My sheep know My voice.” It’s clear. There’s a period on the end of that sentence, right? John 8:47. “He who belongs to God hears what God says.” “He who belongs to God hears what God says.” Again another analogy. FM radio tower. The FM signal is going out. It’s going out. It’s going out. Now if you’re driving along or let’s say old school. You have a really old car where you have a tuner instead of digital and you actually had to turn it. If you didn’t have your tuner tuned in, even though that signal is being transmitted, you’re not going to get it. Right?

JOHN: Everybody has secrets in their life. How many of you know all secrets aren’t bad? Okay? So your mind went to the negative on that one. Okay?

AUDIENCE: (LAUGHTER)

 JOHN: All right, so let me ask again how many of you got secrets in your life? Everybody’s got secrets. All right. Now this is, this is, I want you to honestly answer this question: Who do you share your secrets with and I’m going to give you two choices. Choice Number One, okay: acquaintances? Choice Number Two: intimate close friends?

AUDIENCE: Close friend, intimate close friends.

JOHN: Intimate close friends. God’s no different. God says I share My secrets with My intimate close friends and by the way My intimate close friends are those who fear Me. Now let me show you I’m not taking this out of context. I’m going to read Psalm 25:14 same psalm out of the New Living Translation: “Friendship with the Lord is reserved for those who fear Him.” So you know what God is saying right there? Not everybody is My friend. Let me be more specific: not everybody in the church is My friend.

AUDIENCE: Right.

 JOHN: Okay? There were two men that were called the friend of God in the Old Testament. Okay? Who were the two men? Abraham and Moses. Were there others? Absolutely! Okay, I believe David was a friend of God, I believe Daniel was a friend of God, I believe Joseph was a friend of God, many others, Deborah, Esther. But these two men’s lives exemplified what it took to have a relationship of friendship with the Lord. Let’s talk about the first guy, Abraham. Why is Abraham called the friend of God? Because when Abraham was really old, one night God comes to him and says, “Abe?” “Yes, Lord, yes.” I want you to take your son who you really love, who you’ve really grown attached to, the son you’ve waited for for 25 years. And I want you to go on a three-day journey and kill him for Me.

Now, okay, you’ve heard the story a thousand times, okay, if not, if not more. But you had the Book of Genesis to read, he didn’t. You have to understand all God says to him this night is I want you to go three days and kill Isaac. He doesn’t tell him why. He doesn’t say if you sacrifice Isaac then I’ll send My Son. He does not say that! Do you understand what God is asking him to do? It would have been easier for Abraham to go kill himself, because there was nothing or no one more important to Abraham than Isaac. Yet do you know what my Bible says? Early the next morning Abraham saddles his donkey and is on his way. You know how some people say, “Well, you know the Lord’s been dealing with me about this now for several months” and they laugh.

AUDIENCE: (LAUGHTER)

JOHN: You are bragging about your lack of the fear of God. Okay? Okay? So now God gives him a three day journey. Why? To think it over. It’s easier when you heard the booming voice of God the night before. But what about three, two and a half days later, you haven’t heard one word from heaven and you’re looking at the mountain, you’re going to put the most important person or thing to death in your life just because God said do it and didn’t give you a reason to do it. But Abraham goes to the top of the mountain, he builds the altar. Can you imagine his emotions while he’s building that altar? And his son’s helping him build it. He ties up Isaac on that altar, he lifts up the knife and he’s ready to put the most important person or thing to death in his life just because God said do it and didn’t give him a reason.

And right as he’s ready to thrust the knife through Isaac, an angel of the Lord appears, and you go read it in your own Bible, and the angel says “Abraham stop, because now I know you fear God? How did the angel know that Abraham feared God? Because he obeyed instantly, because he obeyed when it didn’t make sense, because he obeyed when it hurt, because he obeyed when he didn’t see a benefit, and because he obeyed to completion. Abraham puts down the knife, unties Isaac, lifts up his eyes and there’s a ram caught in the thicket. And out of his inside comes this: JEHOVAH JIREH! The Lord my Provider! Now you’ve heard that before because you’ve read the Bible. But wait a minute. God just revealed a facet of His personality to Abraham no human being had ever known before. Why? Because he’s my friend.

SID: You saw millions of people that have bought lies while in Earth that were churchgoers in Hell. What was the cause?

IVAN: Sid, one of the biggest causes are that people believe that all you have to do is just do one little thing, to accept Jesus—

SID: Say a prayer…

IVAN: Right. Then you can do whatever you want in life. And that’s not true. You can’t do that. There’s—

SID: What about the current teaching that says, well, once you’ve accepted the Lord, his grace takes care of past, present and future sins? There’s nothing you have to do about it.

IVAN: That’s not in the Bible.

SID: Of course not.

IVAN: Not only is it not in the Bible, that’s sending so many people to Hell it’s unreal. You would be surprised. Listen, you can’t just say, okay, once you do it, that’s it. Because it tells you in the Bible, certain people, certain things you can’t enter the Kingdom of Heaven. I don’t care who you are. You can’t. It doesn’t matter if you’re telling little lies and you think, “Oh, I’m okay. Just a little white lies.” No, there’s still problems. You have to daily just say, I do every day before I go to sleep, Lord, just forgive me of anything. I just do that on a daily basis. In fact, if I catch myself doing something wrong, I instantly want to correct that because I’ve been there. I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want anybody to ever go there.

SID: You saw some things that will be helpful to us. You saw demons going back and forth from Hell to [earth], to deceive. Tell me about that. Especially children.

IVAN: That deception was so bad. The deception started … There was a couple of things … One was video games, and this was before video games were invented. The demons were going up there and getting into these games to distort young people’s minds. Not only that, the demons were also, they’re going back and forth from Hell, from the center of Hell where Lucifer was at and going back up to the Earth so that they could get to the Earth and deceive these people. They would enter into people’s bodies. They would usually would find somebody that was very handsome or a very beautiful woman or a handsome man, and they would enter that body. They would use that person to deceive as many people as they could, especially lukewarm Christians or warmed up Christians. They would try to deceive them, to take them out, do immoral things with them, et cetera. That’s what was happening. That was what was going on. I saw that in 1978. I watched it happen.

SID: What would you say was the worst thing you saw in Hell?

IVAN: Wow. Everything was the worst thing.

SID: Did people really … I have a question about that. Do people really feel pain?

IVAN: Yes.

SID: I mean like physical pain in Hell?

IVAN: Ah, Sid, the pain in Hell is much worse than on Earth. You see, when you get a splinter or a cut, you feel it one little area. But when you are in the spirit, which you’re in the spirit in Hell, when you’re down there, that pain goes through your whole body. So every bite mark that the demons put on you, every scratch that they do to you, everything they poke into you, it hurts in your whole being. Sid, you can’t pass out. In the flesh if you get in a lot of pain, you can just pass out. You can’t do that. It never ends. See, this is the thing. It never ever ends. It’s always there. It’s always going to keep continuing. It never goes away.