Sid:  And do you know what my desire is?  It’s for myself, but it’s also for you I want to hear God’s voice so clear and I want to be obedient.  After all isn’t that the greatest purpose of life to fulfill your destiny, hear God’s voice and do what He wants you to do.  But so many people ponder, “Is it God or is it not.”  And I recently got a hold of book by Bruce Van Natta it’s called “Saved by Angels.” I mean it is the most amazing testimony but there is a supernatural quality that allows not just a super star because the only super star we have is Jesus, but allows everyone that has the Messiah in them to be able to hear God’s voice and to move in mighty exploits.  And there are ways that God is speaking to me and to you that many times we miss, but this book covers all the major ways and gives examples.  Now my guest Bruce Van Natta, I’m speaking to him at his home in Rudolph, Wisconsin.  Bruce on yesterday’s broadcast you talked about being sexually molested as a child. As a five year old Jesus wrapped you in His arms literally showered you with liquid love. Healed your little heart and gave you gifts of the Spirit, but then you didn’t tell anyone about this for twenty years, why?

Bruce:  Well, you know what it’s sad but we find even today it’s so easy to keep these things to ourselves and you know I keep thinking about this scripture Revelation 12:11 and it says, “They overcame him, the devil, by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.”  And so that is just one verse that proves how powerful testimony is.  And when we keep it to ourselves we are actually robbing other people of the blessings that Lord wants to use us to foster in other people, and to use us just tools.  But I kept those things to myself for the most part, now some of these things I couldn’t keep like, right after I was hugged shortly after I had a vision a dream one night. It was walking hand and hand through heaven with Jesus.  And nobody had ever given me a description of the precious jewels and the street made of gold and all of that stuff. So I woke up in the morning and was exciting to tell my mom about this story and I told my mom.  Mom, mom listen to what I saw last night and I’m telling her I was walking hand and hand with Jesus and these beautiful stones, these layered stones were on the walls and the shinny ground, the shinny road and I was explaining to her.  Well my mom knew the definition of what somebody at some point she had read, or heard about it, you know what the description of heaven is going to be like. My mom got really scared and thought that maybe I was going to die and go to be with Jesus at that time. So I have to chuckle about that now, but my mom was a little worried at the time.  But these things started happening and we hear people being laid on of hands and after they’re laid on of hands then these manifestations of the Spirit, these gifts of the Spirit start popping up.  Well, when I prayed for Jesus to hug me you know that was a kind of a big time laying on of hands if you will and so these things started to happen and different things and that was dreams and visions was just one of them but.

Sid:  But Bruce, it took twenty years for you to share your testimony of what God did with you and you shared it to a woman that would become your wife.  What kind of impact did it have on her?

Bruce:  Well, when I shared the story it was out of reluctance. I was having this conversation with this girl that I was dating and she was asking me why did I believe so strongly about God. The real reason why I believe that there was a God was because of what happened when I was five.  But I had never told anyone and so at this time in my life I had to be honest and tell you I was not living by any means the Christians life and she called me on it.  And she said, “Well, you know you believe in God, but you’re doing this, you’re doing this you’re doing all these other things and I guess it doesn’t make sense to me.  And we’re having this conversation we’re going back and forth and she just kept coming back and saying, now take in mind that this conversation lasted about six hours and I mean it went on.  She wore me down and finally I didn’t want to tell, but finally I had, that was the main reason and I told her.  And I said, what had happened when I was five and how the Lord had hugged me and she began to cry. We prayed together and talked more and that was what the Lord used to actual bring her into a saving faith and realized that yeah there is a God that He is real.

Sid:  But I have to tell you when I found out what happened to you with that accident where the truck crashed on you you’re an auto mechanic, you were working on a truck. There is something about that, it changed your life, but does it change people’s lives the way I discern it does when they hear what happened to you?

Bruce:  Yeah, exactly even you know from doctors and nurses and the period of time that I was in the hospital over five different operations after the accident, yeah it does affect people.

Sid:  I’ll tell you how it affected me, it makes the invisible world so much more real. Did it have that affect on you?

Bruce:  Yes, it did, but because of being hugged when I was five and some of the things that had manifested in my life one of the things is, spiritual discernment and sometimes I can see into the spirit world a little bit.  And so it definitely has that affect on people.

Sid:  Give me one example, brief, of what happens when you see into the spirit world.

Bruce:  Alright a good example would be so now I’m in full time ministry and someone comes and they want to be prayed for. We start praying together and the Lord will sometimes show me or allow me to see in the spirit world and see a demonic presence hovering around that person, or kind of like sticking out of their head, or through their eyes or you can you know be a black shadow.

Sid:  And when you see this what do you do?

Bruce:  Well, what it does you know the Lord gives us these gifts you know it’s very…

Sid:  No, no what do you do when you see this?

Bruce:  I start praying.

Sid:  And can you see it actually leave?

Bruce:  Sure, yes, yeah I mean it’s clear that we’re given these gifts for the purpose…

Sid:  Okay, I don’t want to digress too much, but let’s go back you’re a automobile mechanic tell me what was going on when you had that horrific accident.

Bruce:  Actually I’m a heavy equipment mechanic on diesel on large things, large pieces of heavy equipment and trucks.  And so I was working on a Peterbilt logging truck, and I’d just finished up doing my portion of repairs, it was an engine filter head gasket. I was putting my tools away in the truck and guy that I was working with at this shop, I go around on sight, I go from place to place all over the state here I did.  And this particular shop that I was working in the man that I was working with was doing some other repairs on the vehicle of the truck. I finished my portion and he said, “You know he’s got this leak somewhere that he wanted me to just diagnosis, and he was going to fix the leak himself.  And so I ended up crawling underneath this Peterbilt truck and it fell on top of me.  And it was on a jack, he had jacked it up with a twenty ton bottle jack. It fell off the jack and the front axle came across my midsection and crushed me down because the right front wheel was off the truck and it has what the call low pro wheels on it, the front axle was pretty low anyway.  And so this 10, 11, 12,000 lbs comes down and crushes me like a blunt guillotine filled with cement. So it trapped me, and it’s kind of like you see in cartoons like Wyle Coyote, it just kind of trapped me in half where my body was roughly you know on one side probably an inch thick or less, and on the other side you know across my midsection maybe two inches thick.  It crushed all the way through top to bottom is where it went through and even you know cracked two vertebrae in my spine.  So it happened I stayed conscious long enough to see the first volunteer fire fighter show up who just happens to be in the area.

Sid:  Did you think that that was your moment that was your time to die?

Bruce:  Oh yeah, yeah I did, I did yeah.  In fact it happened, and all I could say was, God help me and that’s all could say, I said that twice, God help me.  Because I looked at myself and from my vantage point I thought I thought I was literally cut in half.  I thought I was from what I was looking at I thought I was in two pieces.

Sid:  I can’t think of much more awful circumstance to happen to anyone, I mean your guillotined in half you weren’t, but you were almost and that’s what you felt.

Bruce:  Yeah, well I’m laying there and they jacked the truck up, get it back up off of me.  And it took all the strength of the…big chrome of the front bumper, if you can picture a large semi, the large chrome front bumper was just behind my head. I was completely underneath the truck, and I reach my two hands back, I grabbed the bottom of that bumper, and I’m on a creeper, and I just pulled myself out because I want to get out from out of that truck really bad.  And they weren’t going to move me because they knew that I must have back injuries also so I just grabbed that front bumper and I pulled myself out to the point of my head was just sticking out from underneath of that front bumper of the truck. At that point is when I went unconscious, and that’s about the point that the doctor said I should have died.

Sid:  Well, you just have, I mean if nothing else you should bleed to death.

Bruce:  Exactly, we’d bleed to death internally because it didn’t…there was no external bleeding at all, it was all internal because the piece that crushed me was rounded and flat so it came down and just pinched me to an inch thick, just pinched me.  And so all the bleeding what it did was it severed by mesenteric artery that comes off of my heart towards the bottom.

Sid:  Now you’re saying that you were crushed to the point where your flesh was an inch thick, is that what you’re saying?

Bruce:  On the left hand side of my body was thinner than the right hand side, yes, yes.

Sid:  That is crushed!

Bruce:  That’s crushed, yes it is.  Like I said, it was all the way through the point that it broke my two vertebrae in my spine it cracked them you know and so you figure the thickness of your spine, that’s how thick I was in the center, that’s how thick I was in the center because it came all the way down to crack in my spine so.  Now in the center of my body on the left it was actually thinner than that, thinner than the thickness of my spine.

Sid:  Alright when you lost consciousness what is the next thought that you had?

Bruce:  Well the very next thing after I lose consciousness is a period of time lapsed and I’m not sure exactly how long but the next thing is I find myself up in the ceiling of this garage looking down and I can see myself, I can see my head sticking out from underneath this front bumper, my eyes were closed, my head was actually turned to the driver side.  The man that I was working with was on his knees above me running his fingers through my hair crying, I’ve known this man for a long time.

Sid:  You know I’ve been reading over the book of my guest that’s just literally right off the press, and it’s an unusual title called “Saved by Angels.” My guest’s name is Bruce Van Natta. I’m speaking to him at his home in Rudolph, Wisconsin just outside of Madison, and it’s an unusual title.  And I kind of questioned it when I saw the title, but as I read the book the effect that it had on me is that it made me sharper in hearing God’s voice; it made me take a little leap from where I was to understand the supernatural realm even better.  And I’m wondering Bruce, are you finding that others are having this effect when they read your book “Saved by Angels?”

Bruce:  Yes, that is exactly what we’re hearing, receiving emails, phone calls, have people stopping me hear locally in town. With tears in their eyes saying that you know that there’s things, questions that they had and about their faith they just never talked about or brought up.  And the Lord is just using this book as a tool to reach in their life and to show them that He wants a personal, intimate relationship specifically with them that touches every area of their life from waking to sleeping.

Sid:  Well, you know I’m thinking of the scripture Jesus said and it’s true, “My sheep hear my voice.”  And I have to tell you, when I read that I think in terms of being directed 24-7 with an audible voice from God.  And I don’t think I’m alone, and I thing that’s where I’ve been messed up for many years. I’m waiting for this spectacular, as a man that’s in heaven now used to say, “I’m waiting for the spectacular and missing the supernatural.”

Bruce:  Yeah, you know Jesus said, John 8:47 “He who belongs to God hears what God says.”  And like you said, you know a lot of times people are looking for the thunder bolts and the lightning and they’re looking for that supernatural stuff and so they miss out when God is whispering.  And we look at the scripture as a whole and we look back in the Old Testament and we see the prophet Elijah. You know the Lord didn’t speak to him in the wind, and He didn’t speak to him in the fire, and he didn’t speak to Him in the earthquake, He spoke to Him in that gentile whisper.  And that’s what we should be looking for then if you know if you ask somebody the question, “What is the general whisper sound like?”  Wouldn’t it be fair to say that that thought that pops into your mind that just comes into your mind, and that’s the typically I would say that the Holy Spirit speaks to us but we often times do miss it because we are looking for something spectacular.

Sid:  And that’s it, we can have a thought and we can dismiss it as our thought when it’s really God’s thought. Why should we dismiss it if we belong to God if Jesus is inside of us, the Holy Spirit of God is inside of us.  Like we had a going away party for one of our staff members last night and I had the thought because it was a surprise and she was coming in and I had the thought “Wouldn’t it be neat if everyone stands up because we had a lot of people there,” I don’t know thirty or forty people there, if everyone stands up and applauds when she comes in, it’ll be something she’ll never forget.  So I’m looking around for the woman that’s in charge of the function and I can’t find her and as I’m looking the woman says she stands up and say’s let’s everyone stand up when this person comes in and applaud.  And it’s like I don’t need to have that kind of conformation, but yet I guess my human side needs it but you know in light of reading your book and being more in tune to the voice of God as a result of the anointing on your book.  It was very exciting to me, it wasn’t someone being healed of cancer, but it was just as exciting because I heard God’s voice.

Bruce:  That’s right, that’s a validation, I love that when that happens too you know that you can be in a prayer meeting, or somewhere and you get that little thought, you know we can even say a voice whisper, whatever you feel comfort with.  And that comes across your mind and if you take the chance, if you put your pride aside and take the chance and say “You know what I think…”

Sid:    Is that what it is pride?

Bruce:  I think a lot of times it comes down to that because we don’t want to seem foolish, we don’t want to let’s say sound presumptuous, we don’t want to make a spectacle and so we especially don’t want to be wrong.  But when we put that stuff aside and just try an concentrate on the Lord and what He’s telling us, and something comes to your mind and you feel comfortable enough to say “You know I think the Lord might be saying this to me or just said this to me” it is such a great feeling when somebody else goes awe I just heard the same thing.  And then what’s really great is when it’s even an exact wording you know when it’s the same words just as your example from last night.

Sid:  Right, let me take you back this was a very dark period of your life and you were a child you were molested, abused, explain.

Bruce:  Yeah, well my parents both worked out of the house. My father was an over the road truck driver, my mom worked out of the house too and so there was a family that I often had to stay with and this family was a husband a wife with a son and a daughter.  And they molested their children and you know they would get drunk and perform sexual acts with each other and then the kids would get involved and it was just a really bad situation.  So at that time in my life I can only remember being to church one time ever, as a small child. It was a weekend at my Grandpa and Grandma were babysitting me and because they were babysitting me I went to church with them to some little tiny small country church out in the middle of nowhere. The man that weekend that was in charge of the Sunday school told the children of three of four of us that were there that about the story where Jesus is hugging little children and blessing children and the disciples get angry and try to chase the parents and children away.  And Jesus rebukes the disciples and say’s “No, let them come to me.”  And the Sunday school teacher said that the reason this was an important story was so that we understood that Jesus loved us and that He would answer our prayers.  And so fast forward five or six months I’m being molested over the period of roughly a year probably. Never told my parents what was going on.  When you look up molest in the dictionary it talks about stealing innocence. At five years old, and I’ve got four small children and they are a little bit older than that now, but at five years old you can confuse and manipulate a child and so that’s what had happened.  And so this stuff was going on, I was manipulated into not telling what was going on and finally some things happened that my parents realized you know something’s going on here.  She asked me, I told her, my dad as I said was an over the road truck driver. So he was going to come home on this weekend and so he came home and my mother was worried about telling my dad a little bit how he might accept it or take it because of some of the things that had happened.  And so as I’m listening to this conversation unfold out in the kitchen, I was in a bedroom that was just off of the kitchen/ The bedroom door went off of this kitchen and so I’m laying on top of the bed in the dark listening to my mother and father talk and it was getting later and they had actually been drinking and so the conversation kind of spun out of control. And like I said, my parents couldn’t understand why I hadn’t told sooner and why it didn’t come out sooner, and they’re worried about my future, worried about what I was going to turn into.

Sid:  And you’re hearing all of this this has to have a devastating effect on you.

Bruce:  Exactly, exactly and so as I was listening to it I kept feeling actually worse because I’m sure in defense of my parents I am sure they did not realize that I was listening to what was going on, but I was. I just kept feeling darker, and guilty and dirty, I just felt really dirty.  And so as I’m listening to this all happen this thought this little whisper comes into my head and at that time obviously I didn’t know it but now I can say clearly that it must have been the Holy Spirit.  And Jesus says in John that the Holy Spirit one of His jobs is to remind us of things, and so the Holy Spirit reminds me of this little thought just pops in my head and I remember what the Sunday school teacher said about Jesus loving little children and answering prayers.  And so as a five year old all I wanted was to be is comforted, and the best way that I could think of to be comforted. You know if you can remember being a child or if you can think of the way your children if a person is listening to this today has children, you know when one of your children fall down and hurt themselves you know what do they want or if they feel bad or they cry, what do they want?  They just want held and comforted and so that’s what I prayed for, I just prayed you know in my doubting Thomas personality that I have I just prayed, “Jesus if your real, if what that man says is real Jesus I want You to come and hug me right now, just hug me and hold me.”

Sid:  Bruce, when I’m listening to you I hear Grace Williams singing, “Never Let Go.”

Bruce:  And so the second those words left my mouth, and you know that dark room lite up, I mean instantaneously lite up and I felt arms wrapped around me tightly. Just holding me and comforting me.  It was incredible because it was a physical sensation, I mean I physically felt the arms wrapped around me, but yet it was also emotional, on the inside, I was held inside and out.  In fact I tried to describe it, but it’s so hard to describe to people, it’s like being dipped in liquid love because it covered me every inch of my body from head to toe and it was warm and it was glorious, it was just liquid love that would just dripped off of me.  And I just instantly could no longer hear the conversation of my parents, instant peace just peace you know I guess the best way to describe it. Instant peace and just the most powerful feeling of love that you can possibly imagine; and I feel asleep in Jesus arms just like that, I feel asleep.  And the next morning I woke up laying on top of my bed still dressed, just as I was the night before and I pondered okay, “What happened, I prayed that happened and even as a five year old it was completely obvious to me that a huge miracle had happened, I mean this was a miracle.”  I prayed God answered in a huge way and you know the sad thing is, the sad part about the story is that I never told one single person what happened for over twenty years, I kept that to myself for over twenty years. Never did I tell.

Sid:  We’re out of time but you received gifts of the Holy Spirit as a five year old.

Bruce:  Yes.

Sid:  That liquid love just descended on you.

Sid:  My guest Dr. Larry Bates I’ve had him on all this week, he’s a man that is knowledgeable of the economy, knowledgeable of politics, and knowledgeable of the Spirit of the Living God.  He is a publisher and editor of “Monetary and Economic Review”, former bank CEO, former member of the Tennessee House of Representatives where he chaired the powerful Committee on Banking and Commerce; he’s an internationally recognized speaker on political systems, the Federal Reserve and how they affect the economy and your assets.  Larry you were telling me before we went on the air that you were in a conference in Asia and something very unusual happened.

Larry:  Absolutely, Sid over ten years ago I spent 30 straight days doing economic briefings all over Asian’s seven countries in the wake of the Asian economic crisis.  Very similar to what we’re experiencing here except instead of being in Asia the crisis is centered here in the United States as far as our mortgage crisis, our real estate housing crisis etc.  But I was explaining, as I explain in this 3 DVD set we’re talking about here today, to a group in Hong Cong at the American club.  It was put on by the Full Gospel Businessman’s group and they had invited, it was the biggest collection of tycoons that I’ve ever seen in my life.  We had people like the chairman of Mercedes Benz of all of Asia.  We had Bill Clinton’s old buddies the Riatti’s – James Riatti, the Olimpo Group, we had the economic advisor to Tung Chee Hwa, the Governor of Hong Kong was there.  And when we got to question and answers I could tell that light bulbs were going on all over the room. Finally this one guy in his Chinese dialectical English he said, “How you know this, I now understand, how you know this, I want to know how you know this?”  I said, “Well let me be very clear, you know your current predicament in the economy has not caught God by surprise; He’s not having an anxiety attack over your predicament here in Asia, it didn’t catch Him by surprise; so if you want to understand as I have laid out to you today my source of wisdom and knowledge is from God, and the only way you can have the wisdom and knowledge from God is to have an intimate relationship with that.  And the only way you can have an intimate relationship with God is through His Son Jesus Christ.  They told me, I said “If you are interested see one of these men with the flower in their lapel and they told me five or six of those tycoons got saved that day.”  So you see when we present truth to a loss and dying world and when people are losing their assets I guarantee you one thing Sid you have their undivided attention.  And when you show them truth, John 8:32 is so clear, it says that yea shall know the truth and the truth will make you free.  It’s not the truth that makes us free it’s our knowledge of the truth that makes us free.  And this is what we have to do is be that Joseph generation that is helping people understand the times like the men of Issachar new and prepare for this greatest economic crisis that human history will ever see.

Sid:  Well, many prophets are saying there will be a great wealth transfer; it’s not a time to pull your hair out it’s a time to seek wisdom and to understand the economy and the political arena.  And in fact that’s why we’re making your three DVD’s available “Economical and Political Crisis” which actually will outline what has occurred to date and then the strategies for weathering any crisis while keeping your finances, political freedom intact.  Tell me about this wealth transfer, how can we be involved in it on the right side?

Larry:  Sure. I believe the scriptures when it says that the wealth of the wicked is going to be transferred to the righteous but I believe that God is going to allow the transfer to those who understand the system.  You know we wouldn’t give an expensive aircraft to fly to a 3 year old.  So likewise I don’t believe would put the burden of a lot of wealth upon someone who didn’t know how to handle it.  So this is why it is so important to get wisdom and understanding and understand how this system works.  You know the gospel is going to go forth and when the wealth of the wicked is transferred in the last days.  And I believe the wealth transfer system will be understanding the monetary system.  Because Ecclesiastes 10:19 says “Money answereth all things.”  A lot of people don’t know that’s in the scripture, money is the answer of everything.  Why do we get up and go to work in the morning?  Why do we save for retirement to have money, what is money?  Well, it is frozen or static labor, you know the old Hebrew view of wealth and labor was that you get paid so many shekels and you spend it for your current needs and what you do is you save it.  But Sid you know we can’t expect that our labor this week we get paid for we want to have the same purchasing power next week, next month, next year, 30 years from now.  But unfortunately because of the nature of our system we are losing the purchasing power and so this is why we need to know how to freeze our labor so that we have the same purchasing power 10, 15, 20 years from now.

Sid:  What about investments at this point right now?  Should people just have a completely liquid; should people put it in gold, and silver, what are you advising?

Larry:  First of all before I advise doing anything is understand the system, that’s the biggest thing you need to invest in is this 3 DVD set to get wisdom and understanding of how the system works.  Because action without information is what I call fanaticism, people take a fanatical approach based on what they hear on Wall Street, or what they hear on television or read in the newspapers.  But most of the people even writing the financial press doesn’t really understand how this whole system really works.  They just understand the Babylonian system because the mystery Babylon includes the financial aspect of it.  So first of all get understanding, but after you get that understanding start looking at your particular situation.  There’s not a cookie cutter formula, but in general we can say “Cash at the crash will be king.”  You want to have the cash in your money funds and cash in your CD’s but also your cash in your gold and silver coins.  Why gold and silver coins?  Because gold and silver is money, anything else is credit.  And you know we’re going to have a new currency, probably in North America, there has been a plan, it’s kind of been stymied for a while, but I believe out of the economic crisis you’ll have people brought to their knees and out of their distress they will cry out for some kind of government sponsored aid, and then in return for that aid you’re going to have to give up your political freedoms.  So quite frankly I don’t relish the thought of being in servitude to anybody so this is why, you know God wants us to be the head and not the tail.

Sid:  Now why do you say “There will be a new currency for North America?”

Larry:  Well, you look at history; let’s go to Brazil for an example.  You can look at the Carazo the Cardozo and now the Credo and now look at history around the world, the currencies and the more beautiful the currency is probably the less it’s worth.  You can use it to paper your bathroom or something like that.  So a lot of currencies…

Sid:  Now is that you’re spin that you believe that we are going to have a hyper hyper inflation in this country?  Where our dollars will be worth pennies?

Larry:  There’s no way around it Sid, because we’ll either have a collapse as we talked earlier in the week; we either going to have one or two things will happen.  We’ll have a default, collapse of the economy or we will have to print massive amounts of new money and create massive amounts of new credit just to keep the game going.  And every succeeding cycle when we get into this debt based economy, debt based monetary system every succeeding cycle you have a bigger bubble.  And when you have a bigger bubble it is less manageable, and quite frankly the Federal Reserve almost lost control of monetary policy in this particular cycle, there struggling, scrambling to get control at it again.  And this is why we saw the bail out of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac to keep the entire U.S. and world economic system from collapsing.  Sid we have two years minimum, if we are fortunate, and five years maximum to get our house in order.  We better move fast.

Sid:  Alright what will be accomplished if someone watches your three DVD’s called Economic and Political Crisis?

Larry:  Well, one thing that you will see is you will see that there is a plan, there is a master plan and of course we have a war of world views.  The kingdom of Satan challenging the kingdom of God and this 3 DVD set with your question answer session outlines this war of war views in the areas of economic, politics, and religion that is cumulating in our present day crisis.  There is a plan; it’s a diabolic plan in order to enslave us because Satan is crafty.  You know the people that would even be putting this on us they are not our problem it’s the spirits that are controlling them are our problem.  And a lot of them are good people they just don’t understand what they are doing.  And the reason that a lot of people in the church have been in retreat is because they don’t understand the system, they don’t understand the battle, it’s kind of like the prodigal in the middle of Hosea 4:6 “My people are destroyed for they lack knowledge.”  And this is what we got to do is correct that so that God’s army and God’s people will come together and be that great occupying force in taking dominion like God told us to do.

Sid:  And I love this subtitle you have of the DVDs, “Strategies for weathering any crisis while keeping your finances and political freedoms intact.”  Do you believe if someone follows this and seeks God’s wisdom they will be the head as opposed to the tail?

Larry:  Absolutely, without a doubt because you know when we understand the system and understand who your enemy is.  See a lot of money is spent every year…

Sid:  My guest Marc Lawson is red hot for the Messiah. He’s Pastor of North Gate Church in Woodstock, Georgia.  And I’m interviewing him on his book the title is “It’s the End of the Church as We Know It.”  What do you mean by that Marc?

Marc:  Well, I had a series of visions they are all kind of progressive for different times of a fast forward to the church in 2000 this in the year 2000 on New Year’s Eve, then I had a fast forward seven years forward to 2007 New Years Eve, and New Year’s Eve 2012, and New Year’s Eve 2015.  Basically it was just a progression of watching how the Lord was going to demolish the way church had been operating.  It was like a landscape, a cityscape of a giant city and buildings were coming down and new things were being constructed and I asked the Lord what that meant and He said that it was, “It represented the disassembling of the church as we knew it to go from a pastor centric where a body of people go to watch one person do what he does and do his ministering while they simply spectate and don’t participate,” except in maybe a service where it grows to where the body does all the ministry, they do the healing and the equipping and they don’t do it in a service, they do it 24-7, seven days a week in Wal-Mart and in their job.  And then we realized that we can’t just let it accidently happen as people are on way to hear that were there we have to have strategic and intentional times so we set up, the changed our whole church schedule.  Our church schedule is Monday’s off, but we have Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night are football games, Saturday we go down to a place called Jonesboro and preach in Tenements’, and neighborhood there.  And then Saturday night we’ll go to Wal-Mart and we’re there’s a youth gangs at a certain big Wal-Mart parking lot and there’s like 2 to 400 young people there for Saturday night.

Sid:  Now do you get about 5% of the church to participate this or do you get all church to participate?

Marc:  We talk, the way we started this a few years ago, we just took up, we said, “Let’s get a few to do it and see who wants to do it.”  And we learned instead of trying to pull everybody to the same place we worked with the people that were hungry, the people that were eager and early, the people that showed up early wanted to do it, they were eager and the people that were hungry for God jumped in on it.  And at first it was just my son, Ryan and a young man named David, and then we added a few then a grandma named Linda Ruby started going and then we’d have different people go.  We’d have a soccer mom come and a single lady with her two kids come.  And then the next thing you know everybody has been gone through the crucible of going to one of these outreaches, and some are still doing them strategically.  And they have one man named Nathan, I think twenty-eight, he’s got two house churches going in one neighborhood.  He went in and knocked on doors, went to a certain lady that had a miraculous remarkable healing got her saved and her whole family saved. Now they have house church’ there where they have fifteen, eighteen come every week.  And now that has grown to where he passed that off to the people that he went to at first and they got saved and got disciple.  And now there leading it and he went and one of the ladies that came to the house church said “Can we do this in my house too?”  So we’re doing it there as well, so there are just body people, these are normal people in the body everyday people.  But they’re taking church out of the church building, not that we needed church all the time, but it’s not we don’t meet it’s just that we take what God does here out on the streets, we take it to where we go.  And it’s taken about four years to change the whole culture to where everybody does outreaches, everybody can heal the sick, everybody can prophecy.  We have new people we had thirty-five new people come to a class and a luncheon the other day, they want to be members of the church.  So we do this maybe three or four times a year, and we take them and envision them and we can all do and we encourage all of them to go through this to go to some outreaches, learn how to do this.

Sid:  Now you have some unusual decor on the walls of your church building, what do you have mounted?

Marc:  Well, one of the laws we started a few years ago we had a meeting and we got a lady out of a wheel chair. When I say a meeting, I mean a church meeting.  We had a banquet for the poor there, every year we do these things called the Lord’s banquet around Christmas time and we have a bunch of people we’ve been preaching too all week into these meetings.  And one of these ladies had gotten out of a wheelchair.  So she let us keep the wheelchair, so that is on the wall and then we started to add to it.  We had a young lady at sixteen was with her dad and was at a conference and she was manning a booth, she and her sister and she was sixteen and her sister is fifteen and manning a booth.  A guy walks by them with a military man from Iraq, back from Iraq; he had crutches.  She and her sister prayed for this man in the lobby of a hotel of a business conference.  He was just walking through there, she got him healed, prayed for him twice.  The pain left and he gave her the crutches and he walked away, so that was one of our first crutches.  So we have crutches, we have wheelchairs, we have neck braces, arm braces, there are things that you wrap around your leg.  So the building is covered one whole wall is covered with trophies of these miracles.

Sid:  Now, you have some interesting terminology in your book, you talk about the welfare system of Christianity, what do you mean?

Marc:  Well, we created a welfare state and we knew, we found out in the 90’s when the Federal Government abolished welfare and realized that you got to get people a job, they have to work.  You have to have full employment, Matthew 20 talks about this, how they went out to get some people to work in his father’s vineyard, the man went out to get the people to work in his vineyard.  He went out that morning, hired some people, he went out a few hours later, hired some more.  But nobody was hiring anybody, and I think that’s kind of where we’re at in our nation today in the church.  The church is a system where a few do all the heavy lifting, and the body does no work, they watch.  And we have told people that they’re too sinful to be operating in this, they are not holy enough or they are not qualified enough or their not righteous enough, and the Bible’s real clear that’s not true at all.  Jesus said, in John 14 “Greater things that these you can do.”  So we preach our people that the minute that you’re born again, and the minute you have an encounter with the Holy Spirit like I did when I got born again, when Jesus is in you, Christ is in you the hope of Glory is in you you can raise the dead, heal the sick, everything Christ did you can do; He said that.  And He said He wants us to do that and we’re responsible to go to the highways and the byways, and compel them to bring them into the Kingdom so it’s not…

Sid:  But if someone can do what you’re just described they’ll get their own television show, that’s not normal, that superstar.

Marc:  Well, I think that God wants to demolish the superstar thing when you have everybody in your church healing the sick like televangelist do now, and you have people that regularly, when you have everybody is operating in the gifts, what happens is the water level, the supernatural, the glory level in your church goes up markedly.  Or you might have a few gifted people leading everything and doing all the ministry you might have a great anointing in that church but when everybody starts doing it everybody’s water level goes up; everybody gets saturated; everybody gets blessed.  And I think that’s what Ezekiel 37 talked about Sid.  It said, “What do you see?”  And I think that what they say to the church now, it’s like a welfare project where nobody does any work everybody is unemployed; nobody is doing anything and that doesn’t work.  You have to get people employed in their ministry so we try to find out through prophetic ministry what everybody’s ministry are, and we try to train everybody.  Andy believer can preach whatever your gift mix is, your apostolic, your prophetic, you’re a teacher, you’re evangelistic or you’re prophetic; you can preach and bring the kingdom to them through your gifting and so we release them and give them opportunity.  We changed our schedule we don’t have programs in our church, our programs are the whole body is getting trained all the time. So that’s our program, equipping the saints.

Sid:  Do you find more miracles take place outside of the church than inside of the church and why?

Marc:  Yes we do Sid and the reason for that and we do have miracles and we do have testimonies; most of miracles in Sunday gatherings and our body gatherings, or Wednesday gatherings of the body are testimonies of what the Body has done during the week; the other hundred and sixty-six hours.  I wrote the book, “The End of Church as We Know it” the one-sixty-six factor that the one hundred sixty-six hours, the one sixty-six factors are the hours that we’re not in the church building for those two hours a week and doing it.

Sid:  Well, why are there more miracles outside of the church then in the church?

Marc:  Because Jesus told us to go to the needy, He didn’t tell us to go the, didn’t say find the found, He didn’t say, preach to the preached you know.  Most of the church the system, the church system is the problem.  It’s not the people don’t want to do it, or that the leader don’t want to do it; it’s just the wheel operating with the system that’s broken that has to be fixed; we have to change it.  We have to… this is as great a reformation to get the body to start doing the ministry.  As the first reformation where we got the word of God into the hands of the people, now God wants to bring another reformation to bring the ministry into the hands of the people.  And the leaders, the apostalolic leaders that released people to go and do this, you will see great works out there because the body is suppose to do the works out in the highways and byways.  Our ministry, the field is the world; the field isn’t in a church building or a two hour church service.  And so most of who we’re called to minister to we haven’t met yet and so we have to send our people into Woodstock into our local community.

Sid:  Do you know what the problem is and you said this on the tape that we’re offering, we’ve got too many doctors, too much alternative health, too many vitamins, we don’t have to rely on God.

Marc:  And so we go to people that don’t have health plans; they don’t we go to the poor, we go to the needy, we knock on their door.

Sid:  Oops our time is slipping away.