Sid: My guest is red hot for the Messiah, he spent most of his life not knowing about the power of God, he was a Baptist minister. What changed that? If you could pick one thing Paul Cox that changed your destiny what was it?
Paul: I believe that it was in 1991 after I I’ve been doing deliverances for two years, I was at a friend’s house in Lahoya and the power of God actually hit me in his home threw me to the ground and for about two hours I had waves and waves of the glory of God coming over me. And I stood up out of that experience forever changed, I remember that I would listen to worship music and waves and waves of God’s glory would come all over me.
Sid: But was there a catalyst that caused that to even happen?
Paul: You know there wasn’t, it was a sovereign act of God, I think he decided to pick on this little Baptist guy and just demonstrate His power.
Sid: Now, since you didn’t understand any of this I imagine there was a degree of fear involved in what was happening?
Paul: You know what, it was so wonderful though I didn’t have any language for it until later; I knew that I like it and it was good and so I just received it.
Sid: Now you mentioned in 1989 you began getting insight in the arena of deliverance how did this happen?
Paul: People had come to me during 1989 the summer, talking about demons and seeing demons and hearing demons in the church and at home. I thought maybe I should do a series of sermons on spiritual warfare so I prepared my sermon series. Had done I think three sermons in September of ‘89 and a lady called on Thursday night and said “What you are talking about is my problem.” And so I scheduled October the 7th, in 1989 at 1:00 on a Saturday to meet with her. An intercessor came in and after praying with her for about twenty minutes the demons started speaking out her mouth, and then she had a memory about being molested at an early age and Lord set her free. And it was like someone sent a memo out saying if you want deliverance come to the church and people started coming, therapist starting bringing their clients for prayer and that’s how it started.
Sid: What did you learn about deliverance that you didn’t know before?
Paul: Well, that I could do it first of all. I didn’t even know that that was a possibility. Over the next months and years the Lord taught a new way of doing deliverance apart from the classical method which was confrontation. That was going back in the generations and finding generational roots and we saw when we did that the Lord brought people into amazing freedom that I had never seen before in my ministry.
Sid: Can we take one person and tell me what happened to that one person?
Paul: Yes, I think of someone, which is kind of strange, that I had worked with for many years, he was an elementary school principle. He had been in counseling for literally years, we had a counseling center at the church. After going through a deliverance he said, “His life was totally changed, and that he was free from the suicidal thoughts. He was also free from a perpetual habit he had of rolling paper into spiral balls.” I realized though we really support therapists and counselors, that counseling was not the final answer. There were spiritual dynamics that need to take place to help people to be set free.
Sid: Now I asked you what was the strongest gift that operates in your ministry today and you said the gift of discernment. Start out by defining what that is.
Paul: Yeah, Hebrews 5:14 says “That by constant practice we train our senses to discern good and evil.” And in the Greek that actually means the five physical senses, and so discernment is the use of the five physical senses; hearing, seeing, tasting, touching and smelling to determine what is going on in the spiritual world. And the ultimate purpose is to determine whether something is righteous or unrighteous. So the Lord has taught me how to do that. He first taught me how to discern evil, demonic, and then He taught me how to discern angels, angels bringing messages and then different kind of spiritually beings like powers, seraphim, cherubim, elemental spirits.
Sid: Now do you personally use all of your senses to discern?
Paul: My main discernment is tactile or feeling, though I have seen a couple of times one time I actually saw a hawk and I thought it was real and I realized that when it disappeared that it was in the spirit. I have heard my name spoken once, another time we smelled a fire burning in the room and we realized that it was spiritual, I have smelled fragrances, but again my main discernment is through feeling. So I can feel different parts of my head different kind of spiritual beings; I can tell when angels brings messages. I can tell if it’s an angel of the Lord.
Sid: What’s the difference between an angel and the angel of the Lord as far as discernment?
Paul: The angel of the Lord feels to be like the furnace of the Lord; I actually feel fire coming up the feet of the angel the feet of the angel it’s like a furnace; which is disguised between like pressure on my head when I feel angels. Well there’s surges of power coming on me now.
Sid: What about the flip side, what do you feel when there’s something demonic?
Paul: Okay, I have on my head on the left hand back side what I call a default evil, so when something is evil I feel it there. So if it’s a demon I feel it there, if it’s a evil power then I have a place on my head where I feel powers, but then that place that default evil also goes off and so then I know it’s a unrighteous power. I can feel elders, and then I can tell they’re unrighteous elders all in my heard.
Sid: So what do you do you go to speak in a church and the pastor introduces you to a few of the elders and you know that they’re unrighteous; what do you do with this kind of information?
Paul: Well, I have learned not to volunteer information unless people ask. So I’ll tell them up front I will not volunteer anything that I am discerning unless you ask. And so they ask I’ll tell them and generally because they’re receptive they’ll deal with it.
Sid: Paul I have your new book in my hand “Heaven Trek” subtitled “Daring to Go Where God Wants Us to Go.” Tell me about this book, why did you write it?
Paul: The Lord has taken me on an amazing journey; I was an American Baptist Youth Pastor and then became an American Baptist Pastor. And then in 1989, as I shared after doing my first deliverance, the Lord then released on me the gift of discernment and all of a sudden where I had simply preached about the Bible I started experiencing the Bible. And as a pastor I preached through the book of Exodus, and it talked about the glory of God. Now all of a sudden I started experiencing the cherubim, I started experiencing the Glory of God and the power of God. That began an experience on me experiencing heavenly places. So really the book is about me understanding in a new way Ephesians 1 and 2 where it says “We are seated with Christ in the Heavenly places.” And I started realizing the Lord wants us to experience the supernatural realms of heavenly places. So the book is my journey and how that happened so it starts with the glory of God and how to experience the glory of God and the Lord started opening up experiences with more rapid form of deliverance where people would walk through a furnace, He started opening up…
Sid: Through a spiritual furnace we’re talking about.
Paul: Spiritual furnace right.
Sid: That sounds like a wonderful thing to go through to get rid of everything evil, but the thing is did God really direct you to write this book so people could be set free?
Paul: Not only did He direct me, I was told prophetically two or three times that I had to do it. One prophet actually said that I was to take thirteen days off and finish the book, and literally I would be disobedient if I did not write the book. I had some concern because I realized the book was for many Christians very radical in concept that we could experience God in this level. But I began realizing…
Sid: Wait a second now, it’s radical according to religious Christianity but it’s not radical according to the scriptures.
Paul: Oh no, if fact the word yada in the Old Testament means to know, it actually means to know by the five physical senses that the Lord God wants us to experience Him and to experience the heavenly places.
Sid: Now when you teach or when someone reads your book do these senses start becoming more a tune to the supernatural and people begin to understand what’s going on?
Paul: This is amazing thing Sid, when we do a seminar and training, almost immediately I say 70 to 80% of people start feeling spiritual beings. We’ve had people say that they have read my material or they’ve watched recordings, and when I talk about it or I write about they actually start experiencing.
Sid: It’s one thing to experience it, but you have to understand what you are experiencing.
Paul: That’s right and that’s the part where we try to teach. Remember in John 5 Jesus said, “He did what the Father was doing” and I had always read that as a Baptist Pastor, but did not know how to do that until I had the gift of discernment then I could really understand that certain spiritual being showed up I knew God wanted to something.
Sid: Paul, we’re out of time.
Tags: It's Supernatural, Sid Roth
Tags: It's Supernatural, Sid Roth