Sid: As you know I recently got back from Israel and I saw something, I’ve been going to Israel now since I’ve been a believer which is over 30 years. I have never seen what I saw in that land. I saw an openness to the gospel. I saw a hunger for God; I saw young people as open to the gospel as I ever seen in my life. Now I have found a strategy; if I will reach out to the Jew first it opens up a supernatural door to reach all people, but I have to have a method; how can I reach the Jew? Ah, the Bible tells me; the Bible says “The Jew requires a sign” a miracle. And so that’s why I’ve been pursuing to understand healing; understanding the supernatural of God because there’s a method; there’s a strategy involved. If we can reach the Jew we can reach the world. And just think about it for a minute; God started with a Jew; the Bible says “Salvation is of the Jew.” Where? In the land of Israel. What was the job of the Jew? The Jew was to be a light to the nations, the prophets tell us. We’re to evangelize the world. Well, we did a good job at the beginning but then we slowed down and turned the baton over to the Gentile believers. But I believe that just before the Messiah returns and as the Orthodox Rabbis’ say “We are in the footsteps of the Messiah.” That Jewish believers in the Messiah will be raised up red hot for the Lord from Israel that will take the gospel to the four corners of the earth. That’s what we’re positioning ourselves for right at this moment. I have on the telephone Pastor Bill Johnson; Sr. Pastor of Bethel Church in Redding, California. And he has as part of the church the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. And he’s not just talking; he is doing the works of Jesus. Let’s just get a little bit of a background Bill. You have such a godly heritage; tell me about it.
Bill: Actually I’m a 5th generation pastor on my dad’s side, and 4th on my mom’s.
Sid: And your grandparents I envy them; sat under the ministry of Smith Wigglesworth and others.
Bill: Yes, yes yeah. Smith Wigglesworth; Aimee Semple McPherson; my uncle was actually a soloist for Aimee Semple McPherson, and my grandparents knew her and yeah…
Sid: So you heard these stories I imagine as a young kid.
Bill: Oh yeah I got ruined by good stories, yeah.
Sid: Yeah, but then when you went to these good spirit filled churches and you saw miracles every once in a great while did you get cynical? Did you think “Well, maybe God doesn’t do it anymore; what was going on inside of the man Bill Johnson?”
Bill: You know I didn’t have a clue what was going on. I couldn’t realize why it happened so long ago and it wasn’t happening today I couldn’t figure that out. And I just kind of accepted it actually for quite a season until I was a young adult. And then I started realizing that I had kind of the wool pulled over my eyes and realized there was something within reach that I could pursue if I was willing to go after it. So we did we started crying out to God for the real evidence of the gospel.
Sid: But you had something supernatural happen to you in your own home that kind of gave you a jump start maybe.
Bill: Yeah, well it actually came several years after we actually started in this pursuit and even after we started seeing breakthrough. But it was a major turning point for me; I had been… we had a powerful meeting a couple of nights and I was praying over an individual and just encouraged him that the Lord was going to visit him and really touch him and it could happen any time of the day or night. And I mentioned specifically it could happen at 3:00 in the morning. Well, that night I went to bed quite late probably 1:00 perhaps as late as 1:30, but pretty late. I was awakened suddenly out of an absolute dead sleep to absolute 100% awake in a millisecond, really difficult to explain. I turned my head and I looked at the clock and it was 3:00 AM exactly and I realized I had been set up by the Lord as I was giving that word to someone else.
Sid: Huh.
Bill: And it was like and it was hard to explain but it was actually like electrical current going through my body and I had absolute no control. And it was so obviously God; it was glorious but not pleasant if that makes sense. It was pleasant in the sense of just knowing that God was doing a work; that it wasn’t physically pleasant. I mean it’s electrocution my arms and legs were shooting out. I felt like current was shooting out of them I had no control. My wife was next to me in a waterbed completely asleep because I think the Lord had just put her out. And He just began to deal with me and He began to remind me of my prayer for the last 10 months I’d been praying literally “God I want more of You and I want more at any cost.” And I laid there for 20 or 30 minutes and tears just flowing down my cheeks onto the pillowcase. And He took me to several scenes. He showed me teaching in front of the church and I had no control over my limbs and what an embarrassment that would be. And the next scene I saw myself walking in our town in front of our favorite restaurant and with the same condition realizing that I would be an embarrassment to my city; I would be an embarrassment to my church; I didn’t know of anyone who would believe me that this was God. And it was really obvious what the Lord wanted to me; He was wanting to know if I really wanted more of Him at any cost. I was reminded of Jacob when God touched him he limped for the rest of his life. I was reminded; I’m reminded of Mary the mother of Jesus; she bore the stigma of being the mother of the illegitimate child all the days of her life. And those things just flashed before my mind as I laid there reviewing the prayer that I’d prayed “Do I want more of Him at any cost.” And when that moment was over where He began to show me what it might look like; I may never recover; I may never regain control of my body. That doesn’t sound even scriptural to anybody on the outside, but I knew what God was dealing with; He wanted my dignity. He wanted me to surrender my right to having dignity. I laid there and I said “I’ll take it if I get more of You you can have my dignity. You can make me look any way that you want as long as I get a greater sense of Your presence in my life I’ll gladly take it.
Sid: You know in our culture I can understand why that would be a tough cost. And say in the culture of Abraham he had to be willing to sacrifice his only son; the son of the promise.
Bill: Yeah.
Sid: So cultures are different; in our culture for someone to start shaking is not really man pleasing, and we have a man pleasing culture.
Bill: Your right; your right exactly. We call it wisdom but it’s really control; we tend to shut down what God is doing because it’s an embarrassment to us and we can’t explain it. And God explains Himself very well we don’t need to defend Him.
Sid: Bill, what should be normal? What in your opinion is normal? Because you imply in your book, which we’re featuring this week “When Heaven Invades Earth,” that things as usual in the 21st century American Church is not normal. What is normal?
Bill: It’s… the most normal thing for a Christian is to have a passion to see impossibilities of life bend the knee to the Name Jesus. It’s abnormal for a Christian to not have an appetite for the impossible.
Sid: Give me an example. In your book you talk about a most unusual wedding; tell me about that.
Bill: (Laughing) It was a couple of folks in our church; they met in our homeless ministry working with the poor and the broken of our city. And they fell in love and they wanted to get married and they were in their 30’s and really didn’t need anything they already had their household settled. And they thought “Well, let’s just invite the homeless and poor to the wedding.” And then they said “We don’t need anything so let’s just register at Target and let’s just register for coats, hats, gloves and sleeping bags and then we’ll just give all the gifts away to the poor the honored guests of the meetings.
Sid: That’s not exactly the way it’s normally done in America but go ahead.
Bill: No, it was the strangest wedding ever I’ll tell you. Well, I met with them before hand and they said “Bill if you have any of those words of knowledge during this ceremony stop the wedding and we’ll pray for the sick.” So I realized man this is going to be a real different wedding. So they registered for coats, hats and gloves. We sent the buses out; people found out there was a free meal so they came to the wedding quite frankly because it was a free meal. And so they had prepared a nice tri-tipped dinner and we went through the wedding. My brother actually his team led in worship first and prayed the sinners prayer with everybody in the room and then we had the wedding. But there was a man that had come there on the bus with a neck brace and braces on his wrist and a limp and a cane. And he was given 2 ½ to 3 years to live. And I had…
Sid: In addition to all of this he was a street person.
Bill: Yes, yeah and this was at the beginning of the change of our perspective on reality where we began to value what God had said and what He had promised in His potential more than what we were seeing. So I actually had people with excitement in their voice and saying “Bill, there’s somebody here that only has 2 ½ years to live.” And the thing that caught me off guard was the joy they had in telling me that; it wasn’t a morbid thing it was “My here’s another chance for God to do a great miracle.” So we went through the wedding and the bride and groom got behind the serving table and they began to dish the food out for all of the guests. And of course that was a remarkable sight by itself. And my brother and I stood to the side and looked at the man with the arm brace and neck brace and all and invited him over and began to pray for him. And he had carpal tunnel on his wrist and I asked him what was wrong and he told me. And I said “How about if we pray for that” he said “That would be great.”
Sid: Bill, we’re out of time we’ll pick up here on this story on tomorrows broadcast.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth